Kabul/Islamabad (dpa) - Germany has deported failed asylum seekers to Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials confirmed, in a move seen as controversial due to conflict in the region.The two charter flights touched down Wednesday night in the Pakistani capital Islamabad and Thursday morning in the Afghan capital Kabul.The planes carried 27 Afghans and 28 Pakistanis, including both failed asylum seekers and others who were caught trying to enter Germany with fake papers, the officials said.The Kabul-bound plane, leaving from Frankfurt, was carrying the biggest group of deported migrants since the first flight in December 2016, when 34 people were on board to Kabul.In all together eight deportation flights, Germany has now brought 155 Afghans back to their home country, after an estimated 250,000 Afghans left for Europe in 2016 alone amid an ever intensifying conflict with the resurgent Islamist Taliban movement.The German Interior Ministry told dpa that among the 27 men on board, 17 were criminals, eight had not cooperated with authorities while clarifying their identity and two were terrorist suspects.Authorities had restricted deportations to only include these three groups after a massive truck bomb went off in front of the German embassy in Kabul in May.However, migration activists have criticized that some people on board clearly did not belong in any of those groups."I did not do anything. They destroyed my future by sending me back to Afghanistan," said Ismail Hazara, a 19-year-old asylum seeker, from the central province of Daikundi but born in Iran.Hazara, who spent three years in Munich, said he had no family in Afghanistan and had to find his way back to Iran.Hassan Hussaini, another asylum seeker who spent 31 months in prison for assault, said Afghanistan is dangerous and although he is barred from entering Germany within the next five years, he will wait and go again.The Afghan Interior Ministry said a number of deportees from Germany are spending their jail time in Afghanistan but it is not clear how many.Nasrat Rahimi, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, told dpa that some of the individuals had committed murder or other serious offences.However, most deportees who committed criminal offences in Germany walked free after setting foot in Afghanistan."I go back to Herat in two weeks," Asghar Abasi, another asylum seeker from the western Afghan province who spent 19 months in prison, said. He did not disclose what crime he committed.He said, "I am not happy with what I did," but "I did therapy as well," adding that the German government should not have sent him to Afghanistan for a mistake he made.In the meantime, Pakistani authorities are set to widen an ongoing crackdown against people smugglers after the flight carrying the deportees from Germany arrived in Islamabad, officials said.Some of the deportees were arrested by border guards in the Czech Republic and Austria while trying to enter Germany and were then handed over to German authorities, sources said.As many as 16 deportees were released after a de-briefing at the Federal Investigation Agency‘s (FIA) anti-trafficking unit while the rest were still being interrogated, a source told dpa."We will use the information from them to widen the crackdown," a FIA official said.Thousands of young Pakistanis and Afghans pay millions to traffickers to reach Europe every year using a dangerous route over land and sea through Iran, Turkey and Greece.
