Germany has deported 28 Afghan nationals charged with criminal acts, in the first such move since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021.

“These were Afghan nationals, all of whom were convicted criminals who had no right to stay in Germany and against whom deportation orders had been issued,” German government spokesman Stefan Hebestreit said on Friday.

The Qatar Airways charter jet carrying the deportees departed for Kabul at 6:56am (04:56 GMT), according to the Ministry of Interior in the eastern state of Saxony.

The men had been brought from across the country to Leipzig for the flight. Sources confirmed to the German news agency dpa that all the Afghan citizens on board the flight were men.

“Our security counts, our constitutional state acts,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on X, and thanked federal police and state authorities for their cooperation.

The government had to work through other channels to secure the deportation as Germany cut diplomatic ties with the Taliban government since the ousting of then-President Ashraf Ghani in a stunning power grab three years ago.

The operation was the result of two months of “secret negotiations” in which Qatar acted as the go-between, German magazine Der Spiegel reported.

Hebestreit said Germany had “asked key regional partners for support in order to facilitate the deportations”, without giving details.

While the spokesman said the deportations had been in the works for months, they took place a week after a deadly knife attack in Solingen where the suspect is a Syrian citizen who had applied for asylum in Germany.

The suspect was supposed to be deported to Bulgaria last year but reportedly disappeared for a time and avoided deportation. The ISIS (ISIL) group claimed responsibility for the attack, without providing evidence.

Aljazeera