BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany is working intensively to deport more criminals to Afghanistan, said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser in Berlin on Thursday, a day after an Afghan asylum seeker was arrested for a deadly knife attack.
“We are the only country in Europe to have deported serious criminals back to Afghanistan for the first time since the Taliban rule. And I would like to make it very clear that we are working hard to deport further criminals to Afghanistan,” said Faeser.
The interior minister also took aim at the EU’s Dublin rules, under which someone’s asylum application has to be processed in their first country of arrival.
The suspected attacker in the southern German city of Aschaffenburg had come to Germany via Bulgaria.
“We are already seeing once again that the Dublin system no longer works,” said Faeser.
(Reporting by Rachel More, Writing by Miranda Murray, Editing by Friederike Heine)
