Germany will again allow deportations to war-ravaged Syria from 2021 if they are deemed a threat to German security, an Interior Ministry official said Friday.
“The general ban on deportation (to Syria) will expire at the end of this year,” the Minister of State in the Ministry of the Interior, Hans Jörg Engelke, told reporters, according to Agence France-Presse.
“Those who commit crimes or pursue terrorist targets to inflict serious harm on our country and our people, must leave the country and they will leave,” he added.
This decision will be considered a breakthrough in a country that welcomed about 790,000 Syrians ten years ago and currently includes the largest Syrian community in Europe.
Since 2012, Germany has suspended deportations to Syria due to the bloody conflict, which in nearly ten years has resulted in more than 380,000 deaths and millions of refugees and has turned the country ruled by President Bashar al-Assad with an iron fist into an arena of ruin.
But Conservative Minister Horst Seehofer hopes to conduct an assessment “at least on a case-by-case basis of criminals and people considered dangerous”.
A spokeswoman for Seehofer said that the suspension of returning some Syrians, which is renewed every chapter, “cannot be implemented without exception,” which angered the left, the Green Party and human rights organizations.
The minister considered the matter a message to the Syrian offenders who commit crimes or endanger state security, stating that these practices made them “lose their right to reside in Germany.”
In practice, this political will collides with great obstacles. Like other Western countries, Berlin cut diplomatic ties with Damascus and no longer has a spokesperson for it in Syria.
