The Islamization of Europe > Next probable Chancellor of Germany will close borders to asylum seekers, he says; Eritrean horror stories of being trafficked to Europe; Dutch offering Syrians €900 to go home

 

Germany's Friedrich Merz calls for permanent border controls after knife attack

By Doug Cunningham

Friedrich Merz, currently leading in polls to become German chancellor, said Thursday if elected he will impose strict border controls. Photo by Clemens Bilan/EPA-EFE

Jan. 23 (UPI) -- Friedrich Merz, currently leading in polls to become German chancellor, said Thursday if elected he will impose strict border controls.

Merz, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union Party, cited a fatal knife attack by an Afghan asylum-seeker as evidence the immigration system has failed and all illegal migrant entries should be stopped.

"On the first day of my tenure as chancellor, I will instruct the interior ministry to impose permanent border controls with all our neighbors and refuse all attempts at illegal entry," Merz said in a speech Thursday.

He said even people seeking asylum would be barred from entering Germany.

His position is seen as an effort to take support away from the far-right Alternative for Germany Party, or AfD which has also attempted to link violent crime to immigration.

"Attempted to link", as if there was any question that Germany's soaring crime and violence rates might not be associated with the influx of unvetted Muslims.

The Afghan man charged in a Wednesday stabbing attack on a group of kindergartners killed two people, including a 2-year-old boy, was due in court Thursday.

The Wednesday stabbing is the most recent in a series of violent, fatal assaults by suspects seeking asylum in Germany that occurred in Mannheim last May, Solingen in August and Magdeburg last month.

If elected, Merz plans to order the interior ministry to take permanent control of Germany's borders on his first day in office.

He described European Union asylum rules as "recognizably dysfunctional" and declared Germany should "exercise its right to the primacy of national law."

EU law allows temporary border controls to deter illegal immigration, but not permanent control measures.

If elected Merz and his center-right party would need to govern in a coalition with other parties. His plans on immigration would not likely be supported by left-leaning parties like the Free Democratic Party, Social Democrats or the Green Party.

It would be supported by the AfD, of course, but will the CDU have the courage to ask them? The rest of the Bundestag would go into hysterics preferring nothing be done to right the sinking ship.

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Eritrean asylum seekers trafficked, abused, extorted by network operating in Netherlands

A group of Eritrean human traffickers, who partly operated from the Netherlands, committed large-scale human trafficking, violence, and other atrocities against asylum seekers from Eritrea, according to a study by the National Rapporteur on Human Trafficking. Asylum seekers were locked up in warehouses, starved, extorted, beaten up, sold, or left behind in the desert to die, the investigation shows, NOS reports.

Rapporteur Conny Rijken based the investigation on 124 witness statements in an international criminal investigation by the Dutch Public Prosecution Service (OM) into this criminal organization. In almost all cases, the witnesses were Eritrean asylum seekers who paid smugglers to bring them to the Netherlands. Instead, they became victims of human trafficking in Libya.

The victims fled their country looking for prospects for the future, Rijken said. They mostly had to use smugglers because they did not have the documents needed to travel legally. The human traffickers took them to Libya, where they locked them up in warehouses with too many people in too small a space and with no sanitary facilities. The traffickers subjected the victims to physical and verbal violence, gave them little food and drink, and forced the victims to call family members to transfer more money.

“Some victims were beaten with garden hoses. These hoses were made wet, which is more painful. Some witnesses state that people were injured and left behind in the desert to die,” Rijken said. It is unknown how many people died.

Some victims had to perform work in the warehouses for the traffickers, ranging from preparing food to abusing other asylum seekers. Many were abducted or sold during their stay in Libya, sometimes multiple times, after which they had to pay again for their release.

The OM suspects seven men of operating this human trafficking network. The two main suspects ran reception camps in Libya - Walid, who is currently on trial in the Netherlands, and Kidane, who will soon be extradited by the United Arab Emirates, the OM told NOS. The other five are suspected of organizing extortion and money flows in the Netherlands. Many of the victims already had family in the Netherlands and the suspects visited them at home to extort money from them.

Dutch gov't offering Syrians €900 to return

to Damascus and not come back

The Dutch government is offering Syrians 900 euros in cash to voluntarily return to Damascus - almost double the maximum of 500 euros in cash typically given to asylum seekers upon voluntary departure. In return, the Syrians must sign a statement in which they withdraw their asylum application or return their temporary residency permit. Returning to the Netherlands is not possible after that, AD reports.

The Return and Departure Service (DTenV) told the newspaper that since the fall of the Assad regime, it has received “requests and telephone calls” from “Syrians who want to return to Syria.” During an intake interview, the service does warn of the risks of returning to Syria as it is not clear whether the country is safe. Declaring parts of Syria safe was one of the measures the Cabinet announced after giving up on declaring an asylum emergency, but it has not been implemented yet.

DTenV set up a special website for helping Syrians return to Syria. Surprisingly, the information on the site is only in Dutch. Though the video that Asylum Minister Marjolein Faber (PVV) posted on social media, announcing that the government will help Syrians return, was subtitled in Arabic and English. Earlier this month, she told RTL that the government plans to eventually force Syrian refugees to return.

The site stresses that it does not help with “family visits or to collect belongings,” only with “sustainable return.” Dutch officials will even help arrange the trip for Syrians living in the Netherlands, although the site does not make clear whether the Dutch government will also cover the costs of the trip.

Syrians can make use of this offer if they are still waiting for the outcome of their asylum application, have a temporary residence permit, or are living undocumented in the Netherlands. They must have a passport, valid or expired. Those who don’t can arrange travel documents through the Syrian embassy in Brussels. The DTenV can ensure that they “get permission to travel through Belgian territory if necessary.”

Asylum seekers who voluntarily return to their country of origin can always receive money to get through the first weeks. The “basic departure support” is 200 euros for an adult and 40 euros for a child. They can sometimes also apply for a “reintegration allowance” of up to 1,800 euros per adult, to help them set up a small business or get training for a job. Only 300 euros of that amount can be given in cash. That amounts to a maximum of 500 euros in cash per adult. Syrians can get almost double that amount. 

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This Week's Terror Attacks and Stories - 20:28 > UK, Yemen, Syria, Canada, USA

UK court rules IS bride Shamima Begum can return to Britain to challenge removal of citizenship

In this still taken from CCTV issued by the Metropolitan Police in London on Feb. 23, 2015, Amira Abase, left,
Kadiza Sultana, center, and Shamima Begum, walk through Gatwick airport, south of London,
before catching their flight to Turkey © AP / Metropolitan Police

Shamima Begum – one of three London schoolgirls who traveled to Syria to join Islamic State in 2015 – will be allowed to return to the UK to challenge the removal of her British citizenship, senior UK judges have ruled.

The 20-year-old left the UK five years ago and lived under IS rule for over three years. She was found in a refugee camp in February last year, and was discovered to be pregnant.

Then-UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid later revoked her British citizenship on national security grounds.

Last year, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) maintained that Begum had not been illegally rendered stateless while she was living in Syria because she was entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship.

The Court of Appeal partially overturned that ruling. It also stated that Javid’s decision to remove her British citizenship was “unlawful,” because of the “risk of mistreatment” that was foreseeable as a consequence of the then-home secretary’s actions.

Seriously? What about the risk of mistreatment to the British public by a determined terrorist supporter? What madness!

Finally, the judgement found that Begum could not be assured a “fair and effective appeal” against the decision while she was outside the UK and in Syria.

Sky News conducted an interview with Begum in the refugee camp in which she claimed that she was “just a housewife.” She said she left Raqqa, Syria, in January 2017 with her husband, and claimed that her children – a one-year-old girl and a three-month-old boy – had both died.

Her third child is thought to have died shortly after he was born last year.

Shamima Begum going through security at Gatwick airport, before they caught their flight to Turkey.

© AP / Metropolitan Police

Begum took legal action against the UK Home Office, claiming the government's decision was unlawful because it rendered her stateless and exposed her to a risk of death or inhuman and degrading treatment.

Responding to the ruling, the UK government said it was a “very disappointing decision,” insisting that they would appeal and apply for the court’s original judgement to be stayed until then.

And if she has the right to return, even for trial, will she be incarcerated or allowed to roam freely in the streets of London?

What happened to her husband?

Wounded children treated in Yemen hospital

after Saudi airstrike hits residential area

A heartbreaking video from RT’s video agency Ruptly shows children undergoing treatment after a Saudi airstrike hit a residential area in Yemen’s northern province of al-Jawf.

The attack on Wednesday left nine people dead and almost as many wounded, with the local officials saying that the most of the victims were women and children.

A doctor at the al-Jawf General Hospital told Ruptly that the facility received up to four kids after the airstrike. They suffered torn wounds to their limbs and bodies, with one small child having his face mutilated by shrapnel.

WARNING! GRAPHIC CONTENT

Video 3:30 in some Arabic dialect. The medical staff pull sheets up over the heads of two of the children,
but they are not dead. You can see one of them move his hand when it is pinched at about 30 seconds.

“We’re sad and in pain, as the Yemeni people are being hit while peacefully sitting in their homes, and today it was children and women who suffered,” the doctor said.

Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened in Yemen in March 2015 to help reinstate the ousted President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to power and fight the Houthi rebels who had gained control of most of the country, including the capital Sanaa.

Since then, Yemen has become one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes, with over 100,000 people killed, an estimated four million people displaced, and most of its 29 million residents now dependent on aid for survival.

The majority of civilian casualties during conflict have come as a result of airstrikes, with the Saudi-led coalition being blamed by international human rights groups for indiscriminate bombings and targeting of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and markets.

Yemen has also been hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, which the UN estimated may kill even more people than the five years of fighting.

Yemen is a proxy war between Iran, which supports the Houthis, and Saudi Arabia which supports the ousted president. Iran is trying to encircle Saudi Arabia with its influence. The two countries are made up of different houses of Islam, each thinking the other is apostate.

It matters not to either country how many people die or are torn apart. It doesn't seem to matter to the US or the UK either, as both countries provide Saudi Arabia with an endless supply of weapons. 

Targeting hospitals, markets, and residential areas are not acts of war, they are acts of terror. But, rest assured, Saudi Arabia, Iran, The USA, and the UK will never be held accountable for them.

7 killed, dozens injured in car bomb attack in Syria

By Darryl Coote

July 19 (UPI) -- At least seven people were killed and dozens more were injured Sunday when a car bomb exploded in northern Syria near the Turkish border, a British-based monitor of the nearly decade-old civil war said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that five civilians and two unidentified people were killed Sunday evening in the explosion at a roundabout near the Bab al-Salam border crossing with Turkey.

More than 60 people, including women and children, were injured in the blast, it said.

Those injured in Azaz were transported to Turkey for treatment, Turkish state media Anadolu Agency reported, though stating the number of injured was at least 85.

The Syrian monitor blamed the Islamic State for the attack, which followed Turkish forces launching raids and arrests against the terrorist organization in the Turkish forces-controlled Northern Aleppo province following an IS assassination of a local official in the region in late June.

Meanwhile, Turkish state media blamed the attack on YPG/PKK Kurdish fighters, who Turkey views as terrorists and has launched several operations into Syria to push them back from the border.

Since the Syrian civil war began in March 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed, more than 5 million people have fled the country and 6 million more have displaced within the war-torn nation, according to the United Nations.

Bab al-Salam border crossing Turkey-Syria

Alleged ISIS member from Calgary charged with terrorism: RCMP

By Stewart Bell Global News

A Calgary man has been charged with terrorism offences for allegedly travelling to Syria in 2013 and joining the so-called Islamic State, the RCMP said on Wednesday.

The charges allege that Hussein Sobhe Borhot participated in a kidnapping on behalf of ISIS.

The arrest of the 34-year-old followed what police described as an “extensive and complex” national security investigation that spanned seven years.

He was taken into custody in Calgary on Tuesday and faces four terrorism-related charges including participation in the activity of a terrorist group and commission of an offence for a terrorist group.

There is more on this story on Global News

Two of the ISIS terrorists dubbed the Beatles admit involvement in captivity of Kayla Mueller, James Foley

In exclusive interviews, the two men, Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, for the first time admitted their involvement in the captivity of Mueller

ISIS terrorists known as 'The Beatles' admit involvement in captivity of slain Americans

By Ken Dilanian, Anna Schecter and Richard Engel, NBC News

WASHINGTON — Two of the British ISIS terrorists dubbed the “Beatles” further incriminated themselves in the mistreatment of Western hostages in Syria, including Americans Kayla Mueller and James Foley, in interviews obtained exclusively by NBC News.

In the interviews, the two men, Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, for the first time admitted their involvement in the captivity of Kayla, an aid worker who was tortured and sexually abused before her death in 2015.

Kotey said, "She was in a room by herself that no one would go in."

Elsheikh got into more detail, saying, "I took an email from her myself," meaning he got an email address the Islamic State militant group could use to demand ransom from the family. "She was in a large room, it was dark, and she was alone, and … she was very scared."

In one email reviewed by NBC News, ISIS demanded the Muellers pay 5 million euros and threatened that if the demands weren’t met, they would send the family “a picture of Kayla's dead body.”

Kayla Mueller, 26, an American humanitarian worker from Prescott, Arizona with her mother Marsha Mueller. Reuters file

Elsheikh also implicated himself in the abuse of American James Foley. “I didn't choke Jim,” he said. “If I choked Jim I would say I choked him. I mean, I've — I've hit him before. I've hit most of the prisoners before.”

He said that sometimes Foley would let himself become a target to make sure hostages got enough food. Said Elsheikh, “If the guard would ask, ‘Is the food enough?" some of the other prisoners were very timid. It was always him who would say, ‘It's not enough’” and take the risk of retaliation from guards.

Kotey and Elsheikh are both in U.S. military custody in Iraq amid questions over how and when they will face justice. U.S. and British authorities say the so-called “Beatles” were responsible for 27 killings, including the beheadings of Americans Foley, Steven Sotloff and Peter Kassig, and British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning.

The families of American hostages murdered by ISIS tell NBC News they are urging the Trump administration to try them in a U.S. civilian court.

"They did so much horror to so many people," Kayla's mother, Marsha Mueller, said. "They need to be brought here. They need to be prosecuted. The other thing that's really important to me about this is I need information about Kayla. We know so little about what happened to her."

I wonder if it might not be better not to know.

There is more to this story on NBC News including a video.

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‘Islamophobia Expert,’ Flight Attendant on Irish PM’s Jet Chose ISIS: How do Westerners Get Radicalized?

Thousands of Islamic jihadists are flooding out of Barghouz, the last enclave of ISIS in Syria. They come from many countries. Now what to do with them?

FILE PHOTO A fighter of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) near the village of Baghouz, Syria

February 27, 2019. © Reuters / Rodi Said

As Kurdish and Syrian Democratic Forces pound the last remaining ISIS stronghold, a stream of foreign jihadists have poured out of the village of Baghouz, Syria. Who are the captured Westerners and what happens to them next?

US-backed Kurdish and SDF troops launched an all-out assault on the Syrian hamlet of Baghouz on Sunday evening, pummeling the village with airstrikes and killing "dozens" of militants overnight.

Nestled on the banks of the Euphrates near the Iraqi border, Baghouz is the last redoubt of the Islamic State, whose 'caliphate' once spanned much of Iraq and Syria.

SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali told Reuters that 4,000 IS militants in Baghouz have surrendered in the last month, and tens of thousands of their wives, children, and family members have evacuated the village. Only a dedicated few fighters remain inside, ready to defend the caliphate to the death.

Thinking they will go straight to Paradise. Boy, do they have a surprise coming.

Among the dregs emerging from Baghouz are a curious mix of Westerners who had become radicalized and made the journey to Syria to fight for IS.

The 'Islamophobia expert'

Swedish-Norwegian national Michael Skramos was captured in Baghouz by Kurdish forces last week, according to the Swedish newspaper Expressen. The 33-year-old's route to radicalization began when he converted to Islam in 2005, becoming a preacher and self-described "Islamophobia expert" at a Gothenburg mosque shortly afterwards.

Skramos packed up his wife and two children, changed his name to Abo Ibrahim Al Swedi, and headed to Syria in 2014 to join IS. There he filmed a propaganda video encouraging his fellow Swedes to follow his lead.

"The door to jihad is standing there waiting for you," he said in the 2015 video. "It's the fastest way to Jannah (paradise)."

And if you believe that, I have a tropical Island in Labrador for sale, cheap.

As things turned out, there was a Swede among Skramos' captors too. Swedish soldier Jesper Soder, fighting with the Kurdish YPG, told Expressen that Skramos was arrested along with around 50 other militants, including "many Europeans."

The Irish soldier

Irishwoman Lisa Smith, 38, was found by a British TV crew in a refugee camp in northern Syria two weeks ago, after she had fled Baghouz. Although Smith was wearing a burka, the crew noticed her Irish accent and investigated further.

You can only be invisible if you keep your mouth shut!

It turned out that she had moved to Syria in 2015 after converting to Islam in 2011. Prior to her conversion, Smith had a long career with the Irish Defense Force, serving with the army in an infantry battalion, before joining the country's Air Corps. At one point, Smith worked as a flight attendant on former Taoiseach (prime minister) Bertie Ahern's government jet.

"She was a lovely lady, always very engaged and very interested," Ahern told reporters on Sunday. "A very fine person."

Former friends told the Sun that Smith became radicalized through Facebook after a painful breakup. "She is no longer the Lisa people grew up with," one said. "She hates the West."

Crowds of Westerners

Dozens of countries are represented in the human tide leaving Baghouz. British-born Shamima Begum, who left for Syria aged 15 and was promptly married off to an IS fighter, emerged from the village last month and was found in a nearby refugee camp. Her Dutch husband was captured by SDF forces around the same time.

Begum was pregnant and begged to be repatriated to Britain before her baby was born. She wasn't; she was stripped of her British citizenship, and the baby died a few days ago.

Among the captured or surrendered IS members are Americans, British, French, Australians, Italians, and countless more. Many are now in Kurdish, SDF, or US custody, and President Donald Trump last month urged EU leaders to take back over 800 fighters held by US forces in Syria, ahead of the US pullout.

The British Home Office revoked Shamima Begum's citizenship last weekend, and Germany announced that it would strip some returning German jihadists of their citizenship. Denmark has vowed not to take back any of its IS members, while France remains undecided.

As for 'Islamophobia expert' Skramos, the Norwegian Police Security Service has said that it will likely prosecute him. Swedish terrorist researcher Magnus Ranstorp also claimed that Skramos may be handed over to US authorities, where he could face up to 30 years imprisonment.

He certainly won't get that in Norway. 30 months is unlikely there.

The Irish government, meanwhile, has extended every possible assistance to Smith. Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan said that "every effort will be made by Irish authorities to ensure she gets home." Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that Smith may be prosecuted, but that protecting her citizenship is "the compassionate thing to do."

Because compassion is the sensible response to an insane Islamic jihadist who wants nothing more than to kill every single person who is not. Good grief!

Berghouz - somewhere on the Euphrates (in green) near the Iraqi border (solid grey line)

Bangladesh Scraps Rohingya Repatriation Plan

By Clyde Hughes

Rohingya refugees sit near a makeshift home in Maungdaw township, Rakhine State, western Myanmar in January.

File Photo by Nyunt Win/EPA-EFE

UPI -- Officials in Bangladesh said Thursday they won't force thousands of Rohingya refugees to return to Myanmar.

The Rohingya Relief and Repatriation organization in Bangladesh told Al Jazeera it scrapped plans to return 2,260 Rohingya from 485 families to Myanmar, which was set to begin Thursday.

"No one will be forced back," Rohingya Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Abul Kalam said.

The plan was abandoned because Bangladesh officials said they couldn't find any Rohingya willing to return. They said they will continue to encourage the refugees to go back.

United Nations officials say more than 700,000 refugees have fled to Bangladesh to escape violence by the Myanmar military.

The United Nations and other human rights organizations have opposed repatriation, saying the Rohingya shouldn't be forced into a situation in which they can be preyed upon.

The repatriation is part of a memorandum of understanding signed between the two countries in June, allowing "voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable" returns from refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Refugee Mohiuddin Mohamad-Yusof, head of the World Rohingya Organization in New York, told UPI this week his family remains in camps and he's worried for their safety.

"Unless they have some guarantees of rights and protections, sending them back is not justified," he said. "This is the third time they are going back, the same thing will happen. They are victims of genocide."

On Wednesday, Amnesty International called the repatriation efforts "reckless."

"These women, men and children would be sent back into the Myanmar military's grasp with no protection guarantees, to live alongside those who torched their homes and whose bullets they fled," Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty's regional director for East and Southeast Asia, said in a statement.

Refugees say Myanmar soldiers have killed families, burned homes and participated in gang rapes in a Rohingya crackdown U.N. officials consider to be ethnic cleansing.

Myanmar officials have countered that their military forces have been fighting against terrorism, and deny most of the claims of violence made by the refugees.

Rakhine State, Myanmar

Russia Submitted Proof of False-Flag Chemical-Weapons Plot to OPCW & UN – Lavrov

FILE PHOTO. © Hummam Sheikh Ali / Global Look Press

There is “no doubt” that militants are plotting a false-flag chemical-weapons attack in Syria’s Idlib province, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, adding that Moscow has provided proof of the plot to the UN and OPCW.

“We have presented concrete facts obtained from various sources both to the UN and to The Hague, where the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) headquarters is located,” Lavrov said, while speaking about the risk of a false-flag attack involving the use of chemical weapons in Syria, adding that “these facts are congruent.”

Lavrov said that “there is no doubt that such provocations are being prepared.” He explained that terrorist groups entrenched in Syria’s northwestern province, including Al-Nusra Front (now known as Tahrir al-Sham), are trying to derail the separation of terrorists from other armed groups “in every possible way.”

The foreign minister also said that Russia would continue to support Damascus in its fight against terrorists and is open about its actions. “We have no plans to conceal what we do to back the Syrian government, which is liberating its land from terrorists to [allow] the Syrian citizens to return to… normal life as soon as possible,” Lavrov told journalists during a joint press conference with Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed in Sochi.

No-one in the west has ever mentioned any concern about getting Syrian migrants back to Syria and resuming a normal life. This would seem an obvious strategy to reduce the number of migrants in Europe and ease the financial and political struggles caused by their presence. It's mystifying why Europe seems so disinterested in that.

Earlier, Russia’s representative to the OPCW, Aleksandr Shulgin, told journalists that Moscow had handed evidence of the planned false-flag attack to the OPCW Director General Fernando Arias. The Syrian government also sent its own data to the OPCW, he added, while warning that the attack could be staged “at any moment.”

Moscow has previously accused Washington of helping militants with a false-flag plot with a view to blaming the Syrian authorities for the attack and thus justify new airstrikes against Syria. The planned airstrike is allegedly a lot larger in scale than the one carried out by the US, the UK and France in April.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has said that the chemicals needed for the fake attack have been already delivered to the area, citing sources on the ground. It accused the White Helmets group of assisting the terrorists with the delivery.

In an earlier report it suggested that terrorists would dress-up as White Helmets while assisting with the delivery of chemical weapons.

Idlib Province, Syria

Germany Accused of ‘Paying’ African Countries to Take Back ‘Foreign’ Asylum Seekers

Germany is quietly expelling asylum seekers

© Michaela Rehle / Reuters

Germany has been giving “financial incentives” to the embassies of some African countries to accept asylum seekers from third states who have been rejected by Germany without the consent of the migrants, a refugee aid organization claims.

Berlin has been adding specific “Readmission Agreements” to development aid accords with African countries in order to deport asylum seekers to these countries – regardless of their actual country of origin, “Pro Azyl” (For Asylum), a German refugee rights organization, alleges.

“These agreements commit the African countries to readmitting their own citizens who have had asylum turned down by Germany, but it also allows them to readmit rejected asylum seekers from other countries, who travelled through these transit states,” Max Pichl, a member of Pro Azyl, told The Local.

According to the relief organization’s data, if German authorities are unable to deport a rejected asylum seeker because they lack sufficient information and documents to determine or confirm their country of origin, they address a third nation’s embassy and pay for documentation to be issued “confirming” such a person’s nationality as their citizen so that the migrant can eventually be deported to that country.

“It is difficult to say how many people it affects. The cases only come to light on an individual basis when someone who has been sent back to Africa reports it,” Pichl told The Local, adding that there is “a very long list of countries with whom Germany has such agreements,” according to which “countries are obliged to take back migrants, but nothing more is specified.”

At the same time, the data provided by the German Federal Office for Migration (BAMF), which is specifically responsible for deporting rejected asylum seekers, suggests that Germany has 13 such agreements, with only two countries from the list – Morocco and Algeria – actually being African.

Apart from Morocco and Algeria, the BAMF’s list includes Albania, Syria, Kosovo, Serbia, and Macedonia.

BAMF has not revealed how many people have been deported under these agreements, stating only that “these arrangements make it possible for foreigners to return or be returned via the contracting Member State without the need of a transit visa.”

Additional payments for 'successful identification'
Similar issues were reported by German weekly Der Freitag on Tuesday, claiming that the rejected refugees whose country of origin cannot be determined are sent to meetings with the employees of some of the countries they could be potentially legally be sent back to.

In 2014, German federal authorities ordered 720 “stateless” asylum seekers to attend 50 such meetings with representatives from 18 different African countries, the weekly claims, adding that “an indefinite number of such meetings organized by the regional authorities” had taken place during the same period.

Germany allegedly pays the embassies for these “refugee hearings.” According to Der Freitag, Berlin also gives them additional money if they subsequently issue relevant documentation for the rejected asylum seekers – so-called emergency travel certificates – which allow German authorities to deport a person “within days.”

The meetings with the embassy employees take “several minutes,” and are therefore insufficient to determine a person’s actual country of origin, Der Freitag claims, implying that they are only a formality used by Germany to deport unwanted asylum seekers.

At the same time, some countries are said to be rewarded more generously for their efforts than the others. Benin, which issues identification documents for “stateless” refugees in three quarters of the cases, receives €300 for every such “identification,” while Nigeria, which “accepts” only one in two, gets €250, according to Der Freitag.

The weekly wonders whether giving asylum seekers identification documents without their consent and against their will is a regular practice, citing an example of a man who claimed he was from Sierra Leone, but was eventually given Nigerian identification documents.

In the meantime, payments to the Nigerian embassy have been suspended “to extract a bit of the smell of corruption,” the paper adds, citing Ulla Jelpke, a member of the German Die Linke (the Left Party).

Good luck with that - we are talking about Nigeria!

In view of the unending refugee inflow, German public opinion, as well as the sentiments of the country’s political establishment, has gradually turned against the German government’s open arms refugee policy.

According to one recent poll, 40% of Germans want German Chancellor Angela Merkel to resign over her refugee policy, while small arms sales in the country skyrocketed after a wave of New Year’s Eve assaults in the German city of Cologne.

At the same time, the German Chancellor’s Bavarian allies are threatening her with a lawsuit over her migration policy, and a member of the European Parliament from Alternative for Germany (AfD), a German anti-immigration Eurosceptic party, has even suggested that she should flee to South America in exile to escape retribution for allowing over a million immigrants to enter Germany.

Facing intense public pressure, the German government announced another package of tougher asylum regulations on Friday that included expedited deportations and a delay in family reunifications.

German authorities have previously had to defend their questionable policy of requesting foreign embassies to “conduct nationality checks.” According to an official reply to a parliamentary question from Die Linke (the Left party) in 2011, the government regarded such procedures as “often the only possibility to establish the nationality of the person to be deported.”

This may be shocking to some people but I happen to agree with the policy. Germany has to have somewhere to send the undesirables, and the receiving country has to have a reason to take them. And maybe a little of that money will make its way past corrupt politicians and bureaucrats to help the economies of these 3rd world countries. I know that's pretty unlikely, but we can always hope.