Germany to deport two locally born terror suspects to their parents’ country of birth
By in Berlin GERMANY is to deport two terror suspects who were both born in the country, but whose parents are foreigners, in the first case of its kind in German history.
The men, a 27-year-old Algerian and a 22-year-old Nigerian, who live with their parents in the German city of Göttingen, will be deported to Africa after they were arrested last month. The pair were suspected of planning what police called a “potentially imminent terror attack” and investigators said the two men were part of the radical Islamist scene in Göttingen. A gun and a flag of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant were found at their homes during police raids.
However, criminal proceedings were dropped and the men have never been charged because police could not establish whether they had planned to carry out an attack. Police say the men are “dangerous”, and the pair failed to win temporary legal protection from deportation.
The Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig agreed on Tuesday that their deportation should proceed, despite a bid to win a reprieve because they had not yet committed serious crimes.
The regional interior ministry had requested the two men’s deportation after classifying them as a threat to na- tional security. Boris Pistorius, interior minister for the state of Lower Saxony, said the men would be deported as soon as possible.
Following the ruling, Mr Pistorius said: “We are sending a clear warning to all fanatics nationwide that we will not give them a centimetre of space to carry out their despicable plans.
“They will face the full force of the law regardless of whether they were born here or not.” He said discussions were already under way with Algeria and Nigeria to deport the two men, and that they would be prevented from ever returning to Germany.
Germany, like many European states, determines citizenship by the nationalities of one or both parents, and also a person’s place of birth.
A spokesman for the region’s interior ministry said the move was the first time in Germany’s history that such a decision had been taken.