High-ranking employees at the German Foreign Ministry have been placed under investigation on suspicion of ordering illegal entry permits for thousands of people, some of which involved forged passports from Afghanistan, Syria and other countries, a Focus Online exclusive reveals.
Public prosecutors in Berlin and the northeastern city of Cottbus claim that Interior Minister Baerbock’s employees instructed embassies abroad to allow applicants to enter Germany using either incomplete or forged documents, including passports.
Syrians, Turks, and Afghans (thousands of Afghans have already been identified for having made use of the scheme) are primarily involved, but also citizens of African countries and Pakistan.
A majority of these have likely already applied for asylum.
Since Western nations withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 when the Taliban returned to power, Germany’s leftwing Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has called for local Afghani forces loyal to the former Western-supported government to be brought to Germany.
However, doubts remain concerning the efficacy of security checks to determine whether such individuals have Islamist sympathies or direct ties to the Taliban.
The investigations come at a bad time for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government.
The administration has been slammed by the establishment Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the anti-immigration populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as well as the left-wing populist Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) opposition parties for its failures—on immigration, energy, and other issues.
About two months after multiple German state interior ministers of the CDU/CSU acknowledged the connection between mass migration and increased crime statistics, on May 31st, an Afghan failed asylum seeker fatally stabbed a policeman at an anti-Islamism rally in the southern German city of Mannheim, causing uproar and a demand for action across the nation.
In reaction, all state interior ministers met in Potsdam on Wednesday last week to debate ways to deport violent offenders and Islamist extremists, even to places considered dangerous, such as Afghanistan. Many of them favored restarting deportations to Afghanistan and Syria. Deportations to Afghanistan were suspended three years ago when the Islamist Taliban movement regained power there.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, whose Green party,together with the Social Democrats (SPD), took a beating in the European elections, claimed in a recent interview that they were “negotiating confidentially with various states to open up ways through which deportations to Afghanistan will be possible again.”
On Wednesday, June 26th, German government ministers agreed on draft legislation to simplify the deportation process for individuals who express support for terrorism, including through social media.
The legislation would aim to counter Islamist and antisemitic hate crimes.
Faeser had proposed amendments to an existing Deportation Law, arguing that Berlin was “taking tough action against Islamist and antisemitic hate crime online.”
“It is very clear to us that Islamist agitators who are mentally living in the Stone Age have no place in our country,” Faeser said before Wednesday’s cabinet meeting.
“Anyone who does not have a German passport and glorifies terrorist acts here must —wherever possible—be expelled,” she concluded.
The draft law, which also says that glorifying acts of terror online fuels a climate of violence and encourages extremists and violent criminals, still needs parliamentary approval.
