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IMMIGRATION

Migrants rejected by France ‘to be deported from Italy’

Hundreds of migrants who have been rejected by France are to be transported to southern Italy before being deported, Italy’s chief of police Franco Gabrielli has said.

Published: 11 August 2016 11:10 CEST
Migrants rejected by France 'to be deported from Italy'
'No Border' activists protesting in Ventimiglia on Saturday. Photo: Jean-Christophe Magnenet/AFP

Gabrielli made the announcement during a visit to Ventimiglia, a Ligurian town near the French border which has become a migrant bottleneck.

He said “the only way to decompress the situation in Ventimiglia is to take the migrants somewhere else”.

Interior Minister Angelino Alfano vowed on Monday that Ventimiglia “will not be our Calais” – the northern French town where thousands of migrants are camped – following days of tensions over the migrant situation there.

Friday saw chaotic scenes as migrants plunged into the sea by the rocky shoals at the border posting in desperate attempts to get into France.

Some 200 people reportedly managed to swim across the border, but were sent back by France.

Meanwhile, clashes between Italian police and the local unit of the European-wide activist group, No Borders, resulted in one of the officers dying of a heart attack on Saturday.

In a process that got underway on Wednesday, migrants are being taken by bus to Identification and Expulsion centres in southern Italy before being deported, Gabrielli said.

Italy is having similar issues at its borders with Switzerland and Austria.

Some 500 asylum seekers are camped out in the Lombardy city of Como after being turned away at the Swiss border, the Catholic church-run charity, Caritas, said on Monday.

In April, Austria threatened to build a fence at the Brenner crossing point unless Italy stemmed the flow of migrants across the border, prompting protests from activists. The situation there has been calmer in recent months after hundreds of Italian officers were dispatched to guard the crossing.

Over 94,000 migrants have arrived at southern Italian ports so far this year.

CRIME

Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Germany said Tuesday it was considering allowing deportations to Afghanistan, after an asylum seeker from the country injured five and killed a police officer in a knife attack.

Published: 4 June 2024 14:50 CEST
Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Officials had been carrying out an “intensive review for several months… to allow the deportation of serious criminals and dangerous individuals to Afghanistan”, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told journalists.

“It is clear to me that people who pose a potential threat to Germany’s security must be deported quickly,” Faeser said.

“That is why we are doing everything possible to find ways to deport criminals and dangerous people to both Syria and Afghanistan,” she said.

Deportations to Afghanistan from Germany have been completely stopped since the Taliban retook power in 2021.

But a debate over resuming expulsions has resurged after a 25-year-old Afghan was accused of attacking people with a knife at an anti-Islam rally in the western city of Mannheim on Friday.

A police officer, 29, died on Sunday after being repeatedly stabbed as he tried to intervene in the attack.

Five people taking part in a rally organised by Pax Europa, a campaign group against radical Islam, were also wounded.

Friday’s brutal attack has inflamed a public debate over immigration in the run up to European elections and prompted calls to expand efforts to expel criminals.

READ ALSO: Tensions high in Mannheim after knife attack claims life of policeman

The suspect, named in the media as Sulaiman Ataee, came to Germany as a refugee in March 2013, according to reports.

Ataee, who arrived in the country with his brother at the age of only 14, was initially refused asylum but was not deported because of his age, according to German daily Bild.

Ataee subsequently went to school in Germany, and married a German woman of Turkish origin in 2019, with whom he has two children, according to the Spiegel weekly.

Per the reports, Ataee was not seen by authorities as a risk and did not appear to neighbours at his home in Heppenheim as an extremist.

Anti-terrorism prosecutors on Monday took over the investigation into the incident, as they looked to establish a motive.

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