German Court: Bring Back Deported Jihadist

by Soeren Kern
August 19, 2018 at 5:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12882/germany-deported-jihadist

Translations of this item:

Aidoudi's asylum request was rejected in 2007 after allegations surfaced that he had undergone military training at an al-Qaeda jihadi camp in Afghanistan between 1999 and 2000. During his training, he had allegedly worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.
"What we are currently experiencing is not a struggle for the rule of law, but a power struggle between an obviously ideologically oriented judiciary and unpopular political representatives." — Tomas Spahn, writing for Tichys Einblick.
"Confidence in the rule of law is not undermined by a ruling such as that of the Gelsenkirchen Administrative Court, but by the fact that it took almost twelve years for Osama bin Laden's 'alleged' bodyguard finally to be deported." — Henryk Broder, columnist, Die Welt.

A court in Germany has ruled that the recent deportation to Tunisia of a failed asylum seeker — an Islamist suspected of being a bodyguard for the former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden — was unlawful and that, at taxpayer expense, he must be immediately returned to Germany.

The ruling has cast yet another spotlight on the dysfunctional nature of Germany's deportation system, as well as on Germany's politicized judicial system, one in which activist judges are now engaged in a power struggle with elected officials who want to speed up deportations.

On August 15, the North Rhine-Westphalian Higher Administrative Court (Oberverwaltungsgericht, OVG) in Münster said that immigration authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany's most populous state, deliberately deceived the courts in the run-up to the deportation of Sami Aidoudi, who had been illegally living in Germany for more than a decade.

The court ordered federal authorities to issue a visa for Aidoudi — referred to in Germany as Sami A. for privacy reasons — to facilitate his return to Germany. The court also ordered Bochum, a city in NRW where Aidoudi lived until his deportation, to pay for his flight back to Germany.

It remains unclear how officials in Bochum can comply with the order, as Tunisian officials have repeatedly said that they have no intention of returning him to Germany.

Aidoudi was deported on July 13, after years of legal maneuvering which allowed him to stay in Germany — on the grounds that in Tunisia he might face torture. Between 2006 and June 2018, Aidoudi's case was heard 14 times in NRW courts, according to NRW's Ministry of Justice.

Aidoudi, a Salafist Islamist, first arrived in Germany in 1997, and is believed by German authorities to have spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan before the al-Qaeda attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. Since then, he has been under surveillance by German intelligence for propagating Islamist teachings and attempting to radicalize young Muslims. He had "far reaching" relationships with Salafist and jihadist networks, according to an official report leaked to the German newsmagazine, Focus.

Aidoudi's asylum request was rejected in 2007 after allegations surfaced that he had undergone military training at an al-Qaeda jihadi camp in Afghanistan between 1999 and 2000. During his training, he had allegedly worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden. Aidoudi denied the charges and claimed to have been studying during that time in Karachi, Pakistan.

Despite rejecting Aidoudi's asylum application, German courts repeatedly blocked his deportation out of fear that he could be tortured or mistreated in his homeland:

In April 2017, a court in Münster ruled that Aidoudi faced "the considerable likelihood" of "torture and inhumane or degrading treatment" if he returned to Tunisia.
In April 2018, Aidoudi's continued presence in Germany sparked public outrage when the NRW government confirmed that for more than a decade Aidoudi had been receiving €1,168 ($1,400) each month in welfare and child-support payments, even though German intelligence agencies had classified him as a security threat.
On May 1, Tunisian Minister for Human Rights Mehdi Ben Gharbia provided a verbal guarantee that Aidoudi would not be tortured upon his return to Tunisia:

"I can assure you and I can guarantee: There is no torture here! We are a democratic state and our courts act according to the law. Those who return to us are treated democratically. It is absurd that a German court claims that a Tunisian citizen could face torture here."
On May 9, Germany's Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) ruled that another Tunisian jihadi — identified only as 37-year-old Heikel S., accused of involvement in the March 2015 jihadi attack on the Bardo museum in Tunis — could be deported to his homeland. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer seized on this ruling and pledged to make Aidoudi's deportation a top priority.
On June 25, Aidoudi was detained in Bochum after Seehofer ordered immigration authorities to expedite deportation proceedings.
On July 13, before dawn, Aidoudi, escorted by four federal police officers and a doctor, was placed on a specially chartered Learjet and flown from Düsseldorf to Tunisia. Aidoudi's deportation cost German taxpayers nearly €80,000 ($95,000), according to Focus magazine.

Although the Gelsenkirchen Administrative Court had blocked Aidoudi's deportation the night before, the decision was not passed on to immigration authorities until the next morning — after the plane was already airborne.

When the court learned of Aidoudi's deportation, the judges accused German immigration authorities of "deliberately withholding" information about the timing of Aidoudi's flight in order to ensure that the deportation would be carried out.

The court said that Aidoudi's deportation had infringed upon "fundamental principles of the rule of law" and ordered the City of Bochum to return him to Germany by July 31, 2018.
On August 3, the Gelsenkirchen court fined the City of Bochum €10,000 ($11,500) for failing to retrieve Aidoudi by the July 31 deadline.
On August 13, the NRW Criminal Police Office banned Aidoudi's reentry to Germany after he was placed on an EU blacklist known as the Schengen Information System (SIS).
On August 15, the Münster court overturned the reentry ban and ordered Bochum officials to immediately retrieve Aidoudi. The ruling can only be appealed at the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), Germany's highest court.

Tunisian authorities reacted to the ruling by saying that they had confiscated Aidoudi's passport to prevent him from returning to Germany. Sofiane Sliti, the spokesman for the Tunisian terrorism prosecutor, in an interview with the newspaper Bild, insisted that the matter was an issue of Tunisian sovereignty:

"This ruling has no consequences for us. I have said it several times: In Tunisia, Tunisian law is valid and nothing else! That there are problems between ministries and courts in Germany is not our problem. The process here in Tunisia is not yet completed, so he [Aidoudi] has no ID card with which he could travel."

Sami Aidoudi (bottom right) lived in Germany since 1997, until he was deported to his homeland of Tunisia on July 13, 2018. He is alleged to have undergone military training at an al-Qaeda jihadi camp in Afghanistan between 1999 and 2000. He had allegedly worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin-Laden during his training. (Image sources: Aidoudi - SpiegelTV video screenshot; Learjet - Ruido/Flickr; Tunisia - Faris knight/Wikimedia Commons)

NRW Integration Minister Joachim Stamp (FDP), who has accepted personal responsibility for the decision to deport Aidoudi, said that the ruling left him between a proverbial rock and a hard place:

"The court leaves us at a loss, because it itself acknowledges current obstacles that prevent a retrieval, but still demands that Sami A. be promptly returned."

Other members of North Rhine-Westphalia's conservative state government also criticized the verdict. NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU), in an interview with Rheinische Post, said that the ruling was out of touch with the public's demand for security:

"Judicial independence is a highly valuable good, but judges should always bear in mind that their decisions should correspond to the public's sense of justice. I doubt if that is the case with this ruling. If the citizens no longer understand judicial decisions, that is pouring water over the mills of extremists."

Judge Ricarda Brandts of the Westphalian Higher Administrative Court shot back:

"The case of Sami A. raises questions about democracy and the rule of law, especially about the separation of powers and effective legal protection. In this case, the limits of the rule of law were tested....

"The courts have to judge independently of the majority opinion. And everyone should be aware that a constitutional state is working to protect the rights of minorities, even the rights of those who do not respect the rule of law.

"The case of Sami A. is about determining the fine line between ensuring the security of the population and the rights of those who jeopardize or even violate security. The rule of law must assert itself to the extent that even perpetrators, offenders and terrorists are entitled to effective legal protection and respect for their human dignity."

Writing for Tichys Einblick, a leading classical-liberal and conservative German blog, Tomas Spahn captured the essence of the issue:

"The case of the Tunisian Sami A., whose real name Wikipedia does not even dare to write, will enter the lecture halls of future lawyers as one of the absurdities of German legal history. Because no 'case' like this farce reveals the insurmountable discrepancy between jurisprudence (Rechtsprechung) and sense of justice (Rechtsempfinden), between law and politics....

"I would have liked to have these worries about the separation of powers when a federal minister of justice shifted the finding of a crime such as incitement to hate from the courts to legally unqualified employees of any Internet corporation.

"However, when [former Justice Minister] Heiko Maas had his censorship law passed, with the name of 'Network Enforcement Act,' that shift of original judicial tasks to private individuals even had the approval of the judiciary. As a result, this increases the suspicion that in the case of Sami A., in the end it is not about the law but about power....

"What we are currently experiencing is not a struggle for the rule of law, but a power struggle between an obviously ideologically oriented judiciary and unpopular political representatives."

Commentator Henryk Broder, in a column — "Sami A.: Even the Rule of Law Can Sometimes be Wrong" — for Die Welt, concluded:

"That Bin Laden bodyguard Sami A. of Tunisia could be brought back to Germany is considered by many to be evidence of the functioning of the rule of law. That is wrong. The real scandal here is another one....

"The scandal begins when an administrative court declares the deportation of a 'perjurer' is inadmissible because he could face torture in the country to which he was deported.

"I do not share the view of colleagues that the verdict in the case of Sami A. is 'a sign that our constitutional state is working.'

"Even in a constitutional state, there can be wrong judgments. A judgment, right or wrong, does not allow conclusions to be drawn as to the rule of law, whether it works or does not work. Not even judges consider themselves infallible.

"That is why there is a system of instances [trial and appellate courts], that is why judges overturn the judgments of other judges, so the law is adapted to the changed circumstances of life and not vice versa....

"Confidence in the rule of law is not undermined by a ruling such as that of the Gelsenkirchen Administrative Court, but by the fact that it took almost twelve years for Osama bin Laden's 'alleged' bodyguard finally to be deported."

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.

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Comment on this item

17 Reader Comments

Jeremy Freedman • Aug 20, 2018 at 12:51

Unbelievable. Sane decent people would be overjoyed in the ridding of such a dangerous and useless parasite.

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Eliot Schickler • Aug 20, 2018 at 02:59

It's more like a ruling from a kangaroo court! The judge needed to have common sense and common sense dictates to keep this terrorist out of Germany! Perhaps the court can give the same break to Germany's Jews to make up for our suffering!

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Steve • Aug 20, 2018 at 00:56

You think that is absurd? it is. But consider this: it took the British government nearly TEN years to successfully deport Abu Hamza on an extradition warrant to stand trial in the US on terrorism charges before it stuck and he was finally escorted out of the country. Germany is not the only victim of (genuine and probably well meaning) human rights legislation across Europe via the EU but islamic lawfare utilising The rule of law must assert itself to the extent that even perpetrators, offenders and terrorists are entitled to effective legal protection and respect for their human dignity. is exploiting it, making what should be a simple court case into a series of ongoing embarrassments to the various governments who adopted it.

There is a quote that surfaced some time ago, it said "When at war, one typically does not invite their enemies to reside within" and on that note, a complete rethink is needed. Starting with preventing mass the immigration of ANY people from known terror supporting countries, President Trump is absolutely correct in this regard. Merkel's open invitation has caused no end of trouble in that country; Gatestone and others have discussed many examples detailing the failings of this policy and the effect it has had in her country, in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe and in the meantime none of the gulf Arab Muslim states (who not only could easily afford to absorb refugees, but it's the land with the same culture as them) have taken in roughly zero.

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Bisley • Aug 20, 2018 at 00:54

There is no rule of law in Germany (or in most of the rest of the EU) in the proper sense of the phrase. The people in the various parliaments and legislatures making the laws, the bureaucrats running the police agencies, and the judges presiding over the courts, have all become so politicized, corrupt and incompetent that there is no law, only a sort of socialist dogma and political correctness being imposed as law.

It would be nice to think that this is a unique and unusual case, but it isn't. Things of this sort are happening continuously, and on a large scale, throughout the EU (though ordinarily without anyone ever being deported, or ordered to be brought back). Illegal immigration is being encouraged and protected by the EU, most of its member governments, and their legal systems -- and any sort of legal recourse against illegal aliens (or legal ones), and particularly Muslims, either to deport them for their illegal entry, or hold them responsible (and then deport them) for other criminal actions, has become very nearly impossible.

This whole structure of fake law needs to be destroyed -- with many laws repealed, others rewritten, police administrators replaced, etc. But, most of all the courts need to be controlled -- there must be some practical way to remove politically-motivated and incompetent judges, and overturn their rulings. "Judicial independence" is only a good thing if the overwhelming majority of judges are competent, unbiased, and dedicated to the rule of law -- this is not the case, and probably never has been. The courts are no less political than any other branch of government, and some way must be found to control them and limit their power, or they will overrule all the rest of government -- and, in fact, become the government.

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KcTaz

Bisley • Aug 23, 2018 at 00:55

Outstanding comment, Bisley. I have copied your last paragraph and will save it for future use. I do not do that often but your thoughts bear repeating in many situations.

Whenever something is inexplicable on the grounds of common sense and when motives must be questioned, I think of America's great economist and thinker and what he had to say.

"The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way." Thomas Sowell

The question now is, who are those who want Germany (and other EU nations) to be unable to deport terrorists and why do they want that?

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Bisley

KcTaz • Aug 23, 2018 at 14:35

As I understand it (and I haven't yet heard anything more plausible), and several socialist EU activists have stated publicly in the past, the importation of these hordes of barbarians is intended to undermine the various distinct European cultures and national loyalties. They see nationalism and cultural differences as evil, and an obstruction to their goal of combining all of Europe into a single socialist state ruled from Brussels. They evidently believe that they're using the Muslims to dilute nationalism and other distinctions among the European public to make them more amenable to becoming Europeans, rather than Dutch, French, English, etc.

If this is their intention, I doubt that it will produce the result they want. They are introducing another culture that is incompatible with the existing ones, and when Europeans have had as much Islam as they can tolerate, they're more likely to strengthen their own cultures and national loyalties, and oppose the Muslims, rather than reject their heritage and melt into an amorphous European population. And, if the number of Muslims grows to where they are a substantial minority, they will never tolerate being ruled by European socialist infidels who stand for everything they despise, and Islam prohibits. If large-scale Muslim immigration is allowed to continue long enough, the result is most likely to be war in the streets for control of Europe -- with the EU socialists running a distant third, behind the European nationalists and Muslims. There is also the possibility that they want to create this kind of chaos to give them an excuse to intervene with force and take control, but, if this is the case, they've vastly underestimated the level of force it would take to suppress the Muslims (or the Europeans, once they decide to fight for their heritage). This will not end well, unless it ends soon, with most of the Muslims deported back to their own regions before they are numerous enough to become a real power in Europe.

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Nigel Godfrey • Aug 19, 2018 at 14:11

For a court to rule that a person that is highly likely to be ill disposed to a country to be repatriated, putting the people at risk and threatening national security, is outrageous beyond belief. It is this sort of dangerous nonsense that has caused us to vote Brexit!

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Patricia Walker • Aug 19, 2018 at 13:23

Beyond dysfunctional government.

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Owen Morgan • Aug 19, 2018 at 12:25

Tomas Spahn is right. This is not about the rule of law, but about the rule of the lawyers.

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Emil Friedman • Aug 19, 2018 at 12:15

Why are so many western nations behaving in a suicidal manner?

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Laura • Aug 19, 2018 at 11:10

To quote Enoch Powell: ' a nation busily heaping up its own funeral pyre.'

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Susan James • Aug 19, 2018 at 10:55

The only thing about this story which surprises me is that there was a politician who actually wanted him deported and made it his personal mission to facilitate the deportation.

There has to be a political will to protect citizens but unfortunately throughout the whole of the EU, there is no will. I am English and know, once someone steps foot on British soil it's highly unlikely they'll ever be deported, especially if they have a questionable past through terrorism or even Rwandan war criminals. No matter what they have done in their own countries, or anywhere in the world, we must protect them and ensure they are not returned to countries where they might face degrading treatment.

Unfortunately we are living through times of extreme left wing ruling, and anyone who poses a threat to the general public is protected by HR's. Sadly the wider population don't have the same HR's to go about their daily business without fear of terrorist attacks. Which tells me there is something drastically wrong with the ECHR Act. In order to give someone with a dubious history HR's ultimately means trampling over everyone else's HR's to be protected against attacks.

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Manoj Dosi • Aug 19, 2018 at 09:28

I am astonished at such a ruling ... in spite of what is happening all around the world, some Germans continue supporting this influx. They have not learnt their lesson.

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Christopher Shearwood • Aug 19, 2018 at 09:11

This story shows the depths of dysfunction that Germany is living under today. This is not democracy, it is sheer madness.

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john S • Aug 19, 2018 at 06:44

You couldn't make it up. The courts have to uphold the law but they also have to weigh that up against the safety and security of their own people. This is something that the courts not just in Germany fail to do time after time. Look at the number of terror attacks that have been committed by people on terrorist watch lists. There should be no terrorist watch lists, anyone who needs to be on a watchlist is a threat and should be deported.

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Hamish MacDonald • Aug 19, 2018 at 06:26

It is becoming an expensive business to house clothe feed migrants. Who pays? The taxpayer.
On top of this, it is now becoming expensive to integrate those who refuse to integrate.
Who pays?
The taxpayer.
Police do not do it for free.
The taxpayer pays for his rule of law and his security in his own country.
When his money is taken out of his pocket, he will have less and less; this means one thing; Less food on the table, and fewer clothes for his back. What will he do?
Have fewer children, and so the birthrate falls.
But what birth-rate rises?
Those who have no regard for the taxpayer.

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Jeff Page • Aug 19, 2018 at 06:18

It appears to be the case that the Tunisian authorities have a lot more common sense than some of the German judiciary. To insist that this creature is returned is an insult to the German people. Those people making such decisions in order to facilitate the terrorists return need to be sacked immediately, with no pension rights and should be forced to attend a common sense course, that brings them into line with the German public. These people are working against their own country. However, it doesn't actually state the ethnicity of the judiciary involved in these judgements. What really annoys me about this type of judgement is the fact that 9 times out of 10 the people involved do not recognise laws in the West, they refuse to accept our culture. Yet when it suits them, they will gladly cling on for dear life to take advantage of the very same laws they despise simply because it suits their own agendas. The judiciary in some areas, then, do their bidding and consider their human rights above the rights of their own people! Crazy!

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