Berlin has tried to reassure the public that suspected German Islamic State supporters being deported from Turkey this week do not pose a security threat. Critics say the government should have brought them back sooner. A family of seven German Islamists was expected to arrive in Berlin on Thursday after the Turkish Interior Ministry announced earlier this week that it would
start deportations of captured "Islamic State" supporters.
There are no German arrest warrants for the family of German-Iraqi Kanan B., meaning they will be free to return to their homes in the central German state of Lower Saxony, though under police observation.According to Turkish authorities, Kanan B. tried to travel to Syria with his family about a year ago, but it is not known if he arrived. The family, consisting of two parents, two adult children, plus three minors, had been in custody in the Turkish city of Izmir since March.
German authorities said they do not believe Kanan B.'s family ever joined Islamic State, but that he was part of the "Salafist spectrum," which means the family members are thought to observe a particularly conservative interpretation of Islam.
No need for panic
Armin Schuster, the interior policy spokesman for Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), insisted that the German returnees were not "serious cases," and warned against media-fueled hysteria. "They did not take part in the fighting," he told the Deutschlandfunk radio station. "They won't be sent to prison but they have to be kept under surveillance." He added that the cases would be thoroughly assessed and that such procedures were routine for German security forces. Schuster also rejected reports that the Turkish announcement caught German authorities by surprise and that Ankara did not provide adequate notice ahead of the deportations.
More problematic deportations coming
The other two Germans being returned by Turkey in the coming days are "a little more difficult," Schuster said. The two women are already under investigation in Germany and are to be picked up by authorities at the airport, questioned and searched. Prosecutors will then decide whether there is enough evidence to issue an arrest warrant.
German opposition parties have been critical of the government's failure to face the problem sooner. Stephan Thomae, deputy leader of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), acknowledged that Berlin had little choice but to accept German citizens deported by another country, but "the government kept its head in the sand for a long time, didn't want to have anything to do with these cases," he told DW. "That is coming back to bite them now. It would have been better if the government had made contact
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