Taliban’s cooperation allows Switzerland to deport Afghan criminals

Switzerland deports another Afghan back home Keystone-SDA

In mid-December, the Swiss government deported a second Afghan criminal. After a failed repatriation attempt last year, Switzerland's negotiations with the Taliban regime now appear to be yielding results.

Another offender was deported to Kabul in mid-December, the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) confirmed on Sunday at the request of the Keystone-SDA news agency in response to a report by Sonntagsblick newpaper.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Of twenty convicted Afghans nationals in Switzerland, only two have been deported. The Taliban have been in power since 2021 making deportations to Afghanistan difficult as Switzerland has no official relations with the Taliban government.

Just over a year ago, an attempt to deport an Afghan criminal failed. Having already landed in Kabul, the man had to travel back to Switzerland. In August, the SEM therefore invited representatives of the unofficial Taliban government to Geneva airport for negotiations in order to organise future deportations.

The Taliban representatives identified 13 out of a total of twenty offenders from Afghanistan. Among them was the man who was deported to Afghanistan in December, the SEM told Keystone-SDA. According to the SEM, preparations are underway for further deportations.

Adapted from German by DeepL/ac

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail]