Against the backdrop of the fatal knife attack on a police officer in the south-western German city of Mannheim, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has appealed for a careful study of the situation in Afghanistan before possible deportations to the country.
"In this particular case, the Ministry of the Interior has been investigating for some time," the Green politician explained in Berlin on Tuesday. "This is anything but trivial, because there is no getting around central constitutional and, above all, security issues."
The suspected Islamist attack during an anti-Islam gathering in Mannheim has reignited the debate surrounding Germany's suspended deportations to Afghanistan.
"Of course we have an interest in ensuring that perpetrators who have committed serious criminal offences are repatriated as quickly as possible," said Baerbock. That is why the rules have already been tightened, she added.
However, at the same time she asked: "How do we want to cooperate with an Islamist terrorist regime with which we have no relations at all? And how do we ensure that the next terrorist attack is not planned from there?"
Like its European partners, Germany does not have an embassy in Afghanistan that can accompany the repatriations, said Baerbock. The then interior minister Horst Seehofer had stopped the federal police from accompanying deportations "because the federal police officers are not safe under these conditions."
Baerbock continued: "Last but not least, we owe it to the victims that the perpetrators serve their sentence in prison and that murderers are not set free in Afghanistan."