German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wants to allow the deportation of serious criminals to Afghanistan and Syria again, he told parliament on Thursday, following the recent death of a police officer who was stabbed at an anti-Islamic rally.
"Such criminals should be deported - even if they come from Syria and Afghanistan," Scholz told the Bundestag or lower house of parliament. "Serious criminals and [people posing] terrorist threats have no place here."
The chancellor did not explain exactly how he intended to make this possible, but said the Interior Ministry was working on the practical implementation and was already in talks with Afghanistan's neighbouring countries.
An Afghan national stabbed several people last week in the south-western city of Mannheim during a rally by the anti-Islam movement Pax Europa. A policeman who tried to intervene later died of his injuries.
The attack has triggered a debate about easing the current ban on deportations to Afghanistan.
Scholz said the glorification and celebration of terrorist offences would no longer be tolerated.
"That is why we will tighten our deportation regulations so that a serious reason for deportation arises from the creation of terrorist offences," Scholz said.
"Anyone who glorifies terrorism is against all our values and should be deported," he added.
Germany has not sent anyone back to Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover in August 2021. Even before that, the agreement was that only men - especially criminals and those deemed terrorist threats - would be forcibly returned, due to the difficult security situation.
Scholz now intends to return to that order.
"The fatal knife attack on a young police officer is an expression of a misanthropic ideology, of a radical Islamism," the chancellor said. "There is only one term for this: terror. We are declaring war on terror."
He said that in the case of serious criminals and terrorists, Germany's security interests outweighed the perpetrator's right to protection.
However, repatriation by plane would require cooperation with the Taliban rulers in Kabul or the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. For this reason, Scholz said deportation via neighbouring countries was now being examined.
The Greens, who are a member of Scholz's governing coalition, expressed scepticism, however.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Greens has said that deported Islamists could also plot terrorist attacks from overseas, while parliamentary group leader Britta Hasselmann raised doubts about making it "attractive" for third countries to take in terrorists or serious criminals.
The Free Democrats, the third party in Scholz's Social Democrat-led coalition, expressed support on Thursday for a stricter deportation regime.
"Anyone who commits Islamist-motivated offences here in Germany, from incitement and anti-Semitism to serious acts of violence and homicide, clearly needs no protection from Islamist regimes," said parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr.
Conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz called for quick and decisive action. "The people expect us to act. They expect decisions. They are waiting for a clear, unambiguous political response," he said in response to Scholz's address to parliament.
But Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany, held the current government and its conservative predecessor partly responsible for the attack in Mannheim.
"Your ideology of open borders and unrestricted, uncontrolled immigration is based on illusions and lies that cost human lives," Weidel said, arguing for border closures and a u-turn on migration policies.
By end April, 13,396 Afghans living in Germany were supposed to leave the country, according to federal records, although for 11,666 of them, that cannot be enacted at present for reasons such as missing paperwork or health issues. The same applies to 8,914 of the overall 10,026 Syrians earmarked for deportation.
