Germany has deported 28 Afghan nationals charged with criminal acts, in the first such move since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021.

“These were Afghan nationals, all of whom were convicted criminals who had no right to stay in Germany and against whom deportation orders had been issued,” German government spokesman Stefan Hebestreit said on Friday.

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The Qatar Airways charter jet carrying the deportees departed for Kabul at 6:56am (04:56 GMT), according to the Ministry of Interior in the eastern state of Saxony.

The men had been brought from across the country to Leipzig for the flight. Sources confirmed to the German news agency dpa that all the Afghan citizens on board the flight were men.

“Our security counts, our constitutional state acts,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on X, and thanked federal police and state authorities for their cooperation.

The government had to work through other channels to secure the deportation as Germany cut diplomatic ties with the Taliban government since the ousting of then-President Ashraf Ghani in a stunning power grab three years ago.

People gather at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin calling for ‘togetherness not hate’ in the aftermath of the Solingen stabbing [File: Annegret Hilse/Reuters]

The operation was the result of two months of “secret negotiations” in which Qatar acted as the go-between between Germany and Taliban authorities, German magazine Der Spiegel reported.

Hebestreit said Germany had “asked key regional partners for support in order to facilitate the deportations”, without giving details.

While the spokesman said the deportations had been in the works for months, they took place a week after a deadly knife attack in Solingen where the suspect is a Syrian citizen who had applied for asylum in Germany.

The suspect was supposed to be deported to Bulgaria last year but reportedly disappeared for a time and avoided deportation. The ISIS (ISIL) group claimed responsibility for the attack, without providing evidence.

On Thursday, Faeser announced new measures to tighten knife laws, strengthen security authorities’ powers, make repatriations easier and reduce “irregular migration”, dpa reported.

The Solingen attack comes amid debate over immigration ahead of regional elections on Sunday in Saxony and Thuringia where anti-immigration parties such as the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) are expected to do well.

In June, Chancellor Olaf Scholz had promised that Germany would start deporting criminals from Afghanistan and Syria again after a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant killed one police officer and injured four people in Mannheim.

“It is a clear signal: Those who commit crimes cannot count on us not deporting,” Scholz said on Friday during an election campaign event for his centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) near Leipzig.

Germany stopped deportations to Afghanistan and closed its embassy in Kabul following the Taliban takeover in 2021.

The deportations to Afghanistan have long been criticised by rights groups amid widespread human rights abuses there.

The forcible transfer of “so-called ‘dangerous individuals’ and criminals to Afghanistan and Syria shows politics is far removed from international law”, said Amnesty International in Germany. “We all have human rights – and no one should be deported to a country where there is risk of torture.”