The eastern German state of Brandenburg’s Interior Minister Rene Wilke on Friday said he was pushing for the return of a Yazidi family recently deported to Iraq, saying the removal may have violated a court order.
The Yazidis are a religious minority that suffered genocide at the hands of the “Islamic State” (IS) militant group in Iraq in 2014, making such deportations particularly contentious.
What do we know about the case?
The family, which includes four underage children, was deported on Tuesday, even though a court had lifted their obligation to leave the country on the same day.
On Tuesday, 43 people were deported to Iraq on a charter flight from Leipzig to Baghdad. However, contrary to initial claims by the authorities of the participating federal states, the plane was not just filled with single men who were required to leave the country, some of whom had committed crimes in the past. The Yazidi family was also on board.
The family’s lawyer had filed an emergency appeal with the Potsdam Administrative Court before the flight. The court ruled in their favor, but the family was already en route to Baghdad by then.
“Given the chain of circumstances, the specific fate of the family, and the imperative to restore legal compliance, I have instructed the relevant Brandenburg authorities to work with federal officials on bringing the family back — provided the court decision in their favor holds,” Wilke said. He stressed that the federal government must issue the necessary travel documents and recognize the court ruling.
Aftermath of a genocide
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Wilke said the incident had personally moved him. The court’s written decision, which retroactively suspended the deportation, wasn’t available until after they had landed in Baghdad,” he noted. “At that point, the involved authorities no longer had the ability to intervene.”
The Yazidi family, who had been living in Lychen in Brandenburg’s Uckermark region, had filed a lawsuit in 2023 against the rejection of their application for international protection and the deportation order. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees had denied the family’s asylum application.
Why is deportation of Yazidis so controversial?
Politicians from the center-left Social Democrats, the environmentalist Greens, and the socialist Left Party have called for the family’s return.
In 2023, the German Bundestag officially recognized the crimes committed by IS against Yazidis in 2014 as genocide.
Many Yazidis who fled IS atrocities still can no longer return home because their villages in Sinjar remain destroyed or lawless. Some IS fighters and sympathizers remain active in parts of Iraq, particularly in rural or unstable areas.
Looking for kidnapped Yazidis
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The group Nadia’s Initiative, which advocates for survivors of sexual violence and aims to rebuild communities in crisis, said it was concerned that the case was not an isolated incident.
“The family—two parents and four young children—had lived in Germany for years. The children were enrolled in school and fully integrated into their community. This deportation has devastated the family and undermined their basic sense of safety and belonging.”
“Other Yazidi families in Germany have also received deportation notices, and many now live in constant fear of forced return to a region still grappling with the aftermath of genocide, displacement, and lack of tangible support from the Iraqi government.”
Edited by: Wesley Dockery
