Since the attack on the Berlin Christmas market at the end of 2016, Germany has deported more than 90 so-called perpetrators and other "relevant persons" from the Islamist scene to their home countries. This emerges from an unpublished response from the Federal Government on an FDP request, which is the SPIEGEL.
Thus, there are obviously large differences between the federal states: While North Rhine-Westphalia came to 29 deportations, Baden-Württemberg to 16 and Berlin to 10, in the statistics no repatriations for Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland recorded.
According to the figures of the Federal Government, there are still 225 perpetrators in Germany where authorities investigate expulsions or other consequences under immigration law. 40 percent of them are from Syria, where they are not deported at present; many more are from Iraq, Turkey or Russia.
"We urgently need a federal authority"
The FDP interior expert Stephan Thomae criticized that the number of repatriations apparently depends on "which state is responsible and who is currently governing." Thomae demands: "We urgently need a federal authority for deportations and effective agreements with the countries of origin."
After Syria, Germany will not deport anyone for at least six months. This is what the interior ministers of the federal and state governments agreed on Friday. At the same time, they called on the federal government to "create the conditions" that in particular perpetrators and serious offenders could be deported back to Syria.
That should be difficult: Currently there is no region in the civil war country, in the estimate of the Foreign Office, in which refugees can return without risk. They were threatened with "repressions, up to immediate danger to life and limb".
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