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Germany set to halt deportations to Iran amid protests

November 28, 2022

State interior ministers have decided on the move due to the violent suppression of anti-government protests. Meanwhile, Tehran has summoned the German ambassador for the third time.

https://p.dw.com/p/4KCbG
Iranians in Frankfurt, Germany protest against the regime on November 26, 2022.
Germany has frozen the deportation of people to Iran until further noticeImage: Farid Ashrafian/DW

Germany will halt the deportation of people to Iran at present, state interior ministers agreed on Monday.

The decision comes amid the tense situation in Iran sparked by the crackdown on protests ongoing for over two months.

News agency dpa reported Bavaria's state interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, as saying ministers agreed that "in principle there should be no deportations there until further notice."

Herrmann currently chairs the Conference of Interior Ministers, which is set to meet on Wednesday for a regular summit of Germany's top federal and regional security officials.

The minister said that deportation will only be considered in cases of dangerous persons and serious criminals. He also asked the federal government to regularly update its assessment of the internal situation in Iran, as it would be the basis for further decisions.

Iran has been gripped by protests for several weeks since Jina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, was arrested for not wearing the hijab as prescribed by the regime.

Amini subsequently died in police custody in September 2022, prompting tens of thousands of people to come out on the streets and protest the regime's policies.

Tehran summons German ambassador

Meanwhile on Monday, Iranian authorities summoned the German ambassador in Tehran, in protest over a UN Human Rights Council decision to probe Iran's response to the protests.

The decision to launch a high-level investigation into the Iranian response to the protests was taken during an urgent session requested by Germany and Iceland on Thursday.

This is Tehran's third summoning of the German ambassador, Hans-Udo Muzel, since the nationwide protests started in late September.

Khadijeh Karimi (back, r), deputy vice president for women's and family affairs of Iran, attends a special session of the UN Human Rights Council at UN headquarters.
The UNHRC held a special session last week on Tehran's response to the protestsImage: Martial Trezzini/KEYSTONE/dpa/picture alliance

"The hasty and instrumentalized use of the human rights question and the adoption of political approaches to pressure independent countries should definitively be condemned," the French news agency AFP quoted Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani as saying. "These actions will not contribute to the promotion of human rights."

Germany has strongly condemned the Iranian authorities and their deadly crackdown on the protests.

rmt/rt (AFP, dpa, AP)