A court in Germany has rejected a lawsuit filed by a Yazidi family, who had been deported to Iraq after their asylum application was rejected. However, further appeals may still be filed.
The Potsdam Administrative Court confirmed that the deportation of a Yazidi family to Iraq was ultimately a legitimate decision.
The family was deported a week ago even while an urgent appeal against the deportation order was being considered.
The obligation to leave Germany had been lifted by the time of the deportation flight, pending further investigations, but it was too late to stop the Yazidi family from being sent back to Iraq as they were already on the airplane.
The family with four children had been living in the north-eastern German town of Lychen for several years, located about 100 kilometers north of the capital Berlin.
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Ten years after genocide, Iraq is deemed 'safe'
In this latest ruling on the case, the administrative court found that following their evaluation, there was no longer sufficient evidence of any remaining significant threat to Yazidis in Iraq.
A decade ago, Yazidis were among the main populations in Iraq and Syria who suffered persecution and mass atrocities under the reign of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.
In 2023, the German Parliament (Bundestag) officially recognized the crimes against Yazidis committed by IS as a genocide. Around 5,000 members of the Yazidi community in Iraq were brutally murdered by the Islamist group in 2014 and 2015 while many more were treated as slaves and sexually abused.
The religious minority has historically also suffered mistreatment and discrimination under Iraq's previous Baathist regime when Saddam Hussein was in power.
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One month to appeal court ruling
The Yazidi family had their initial asylum case rejected by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) back in 2023 — the same year that Germany ruled that the religious minority had indeed suffered a genocide in 2014 and 2015.
In the 2023 decision, the court found the family's claim for asylum protection to be "manifestly unfounded."
Their request for an emergency stay was also rejected in that same 2023 ruling, which effectively obliged them to leave the country voluntarily or face deportation.
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The latest court ruling in Potsdam has further downgraded the reason for the original rejection to being simply "unfounded," according to a court spokesperson. However, the potential impact this could have on the family's legal position is not known.
The family's lawyer now has one month to file an appeal with the Higher Administrative Court for the state of Brandenburg.
Brandenburg’s Interior Minister Michael Stübgen stated he would facilitate the family’s return in coordination with the federal government if the court did eventually rule in their favor, reported Baghdad-based Shia news portal Shafaq News, which reports regularly on news relating to northern Iraq.
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with dpa