Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

IMMIGRATION

Sweden agrees to accept camp refugees

Sweden and a dozen other European countries have agreed to accept Somali and Eritrean refugees from camps in Kenya and Sudan.

Published: 27 September 2009 11:14 CEST

The refugees will be accepted into Sweden as part of quotas agreed with the UNHCR – the refugee organ of the United Nations.

“It feels good that Sweden can take part in such as large humanitarian operation,” Dan Eliasson, the director-general of the Swedish Migration Board, told Sveriges Radio’s news programme Ekot.

Three further camps on Iraq’s border with Syria will also be emptied in cooperation with the USA. The camps currently house mostly stateless Palestinian refugees.

“These camps are in the some of the most difficult places on Earth where the living conditions are dreadful. Now we can help to ensure…that these people that live there can come to Europe and the USA,” Eliasson said.

Sweden is set to accept a couple of hundred refugees of the total of almost 3,000, according to Ekot.

Sweden has been a driving force within the EU to push member states to accept more of the so-called quota refugees. Sweden is the EU country that accepts the most, with a total of 1,900 last year, of the 4,800 that arrived in Europe.

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.

SHOW COMMENTS