AFD lobbied Assad to take back refugees

GERMANY’S far-right AFD party lobbied Bashar al-assad to take back Syrian refugees retrained in Russia, it has emerged.

Five AFD MPS wrote to the Syrian dictator in 2018 to request an in-person meeting to discuss the “orderly repatriation of Syrians” and “mutually beneficial relationships with Russia and its allies”, broadcaster ZDF said yesterday.

The letter, sent on Oct 11 of that year, suggested that the refugees could first be transferred to Russia, where they would be “qualified for certain trades that would be needed in Syria”.

ZDF’S report did not state whether the audience with Assad was granted, though an AFD delegation did travel to Syria in 2019 to meet regime officials.

Months earlier, Waldemar Herdt, an AFD MP, travelled to Moscow, where he floated the idea of setting up a Russian-german organisation to promote a pro-russian narrative on the annexation of Crimea.

It is unclear how advanced the discussions were between Syria, Moscow and the AFD, which has never been in power but has surged in the polls in recent years amid growing anti-immigrant sentiment in Germany.

In a statement to ZDF, Harald Weyel, an AFD MP and one of the signatories of the letter to the Syrian leader, said “it was always about voluntary return and making it attractive and meaningful”.

The Afd’s migration policy is under intense scrutiny after it emerged earlier this month that some of its members had attended a secretive meeting with neo-nazis and other Right-wing extremists in Potsdam, where they held talks on the mass expulsion of German immigrants – including, allegedly, those with German citizenship.

After reports of the meeting emerged, tens of thousands marched in cities and towns across Germany at the weekend, with many calling for the farright party to be banned.

Polling suggests AFD support has fallen from 23 per cent to 21.5 per cent.