A recent charter flight from Hannover-Langenhagen airport to the Irak departed with 47 migrants from 11 German states, according to the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior. The ministry confirmed that a portion of these migrants had a criminal record. The Bild newspaper reported the next day, “Women and children gone, but few criminals.”
The ZDF article questioned the effectiveness and sincerity of the action taken by the responsible Faeser Ministry. The ministry confirmed in response to a Monday inquiry that the individuals were legally required to be deported as they had not utilized the opportunity of a voluntary departure within the given timeframe and their departure obligation had thus become enforceable.
The Bild report stated that on the night of the operation, police vehicles from all over Germany arrived at the Hannover airport. It was further reported that a Turkish charter airline, which has been contracted by the German government for deportation flights, was involved in the operation.
The reality of the 47 people, as reported by Bild, is that 16 of them, all male, were from Lower Saxony, including nine convicted criminals. Protesters at the Hannover airport claimed that some of the deported individuals were well-integrated into society. The article explains the effect of the recent deportation, stating that it does not significantly change the asylum statistics, with 24,566 Iraqis still being out of country and subject to deportation as of January 1, 2024 and 9,046 new asylum applications from Iraqi nationals having been filed in the same year.
The article also explains the apparent sham activity of the BMI, stating that in three deportation flights in Hesse the previous week, the proportion of criminals on board was even lower. The seats for the deportation-priority individuals on three scheduled flights to Turkey had been booked by the BMI, but instead of the 250 criminals from Hesse, all on board were women, children and people who had already voluntarily left the country.
Additionally, inquiries revealed that most of the booked seats on one of the three flights even remained empty because the people had left the country on their own before the flight.