Nouripour warns
Why the Green Party leader doesn't want to deport people to Afghanistan
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After the knife attack in Mannheim, several parties are calling for the deportation of serious criminals to Afghanistan. Green Party leader Nouripour speaks out against it. Such deportations could even be harmful to security in Germany, he argues.
Green Party leader Omid Nouripour is skeptical about calls for Afghans to be deported. “You shouldn't create the illusion that we'll now put people on the plane and then we'll just close our eyes and then everything will get better,” he said on MDR Aktuell. Deportations are not a given. “Simply throwing out slogans where you don't deliver in the end means you end up disappointing people.”
Nouripour also referred to the situation in Afghanistan, which is ruled by the Taliban. He questioned the extent to which negotiations with the group on deportation agreements made sense. “The Taliban are Stone Age Islamists,” said the Green politician. They mostly asked for money. “If we give money to Islamists, they can use it to build networks. That doesn't contribute to our security either.” Recognizing the Taliban as a government at all would be a “gigantic tailwind for Islamism,” emphasized the Green politician. To date, no country in the world has officially recognized the Taliban government.
Union and FDP for deportation of serious criminals
The debate about deportations to Afghanistan was triggered by a suspected Islamist attack by an Afghan in Mannheim. The man, who fled to Germany as a teenager in 2013, injured five participants in a rally by the anti-Islam movement Pax Europa and a police officer with a knife on Friday. The officer later died from his injuries.
Several Union-governed federal states supported the proposal by Hamburg Interior Senator Andy Grote to deport serious criminal foreigners to Afghanistan and Syria in the future. The head of the FDP in the Bundestag, Christian Dürr, also spoke out in favor of deportations to Afghanistan after the attack.
It is not the job of politicians to propagate the most obvious things, but real solutions are needed, Nouripour continued. “And these real solutions also include the fact that the man was very likely radicalized in our country.” It is therefore important to think about how such radicalization can be prevented.
