Germany has deported another group of Afghan men to their home country on a charter flight, dpa has learnt.
According to the information available, the group included criminals who had been convicted of offences including rape, manslaughter and sexual assault.
A total of five German states registered around 30 people for the deportation flight.
The aircraft took off from the eastern Leipzig/Halle Airport during the night, and was expected to land in the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday. A dpa reporter on the ground said around 35 people gathered in the terminal to protest against the deportation.
The German government has struck a deal with Afghanistan's Islamist Taliban authorities, enabling it to carry out regular deportations to Afghanistan.
In August 2024, 28 male offenders were deported from Leipzig to Kabul for the first time since the Taliban seized power three years earlier, with Qatar's assistance.
Germany has since also organized its own deportations to Afghanistan - both individual deportations on scheduled flights and group charters.
Opponents have criticized the fact that the government is working with the Taliban and making practical concessions to enable deportations, while refusing to recognize the militant group because of human rights violations.
The concessions include allowing individual Taliban diplomats to be posted to Afghan missions in Germany, which had previously been staffed exclusively by diplomats appointed by the previous government.
The deportations have not all gone smoothly. A planned group deportation of men to Afghanistan scheduled for late May was cancelled, with sources citing the Taliban's refusal to cooperate.
Sources told dpa that the Islamist rulers in Kabul had expressed dissatisfaction with what they saw as the German Foreign Office's unwillingness to engage in dialogue.
The Taliban are primarily interested in posting more diplomats to Afghan missions in Germany. Asked at the time whether the Islamists had linked their cooperation on deportations to the dispatch of additional diplomats, a Foreign Office spokesman said he could not comment on the details of talks being conducted.
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said in November that "criminals and individuals deemed a security threat must be the priority." That does not mean, however, that deportations will be limited exclusively to those two groups in the future, Dobrindt said.
