German minister rules out asylum seeker deportations to Syria

German interior minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) has ruled out deporting Syrian asylum seekers to their country of origin until the security situation there improves, the magazine SPIEGEL reported on Friday.

According to SPIEGEL, Seehofer's stance was informed by an official report which was recently presented to him by the German Foreign Office. "At the moment, deportations cannot be conducted to any region of Syria," he told the magazine, adding that the policy "also applies to criminals."

Seehofer is traditionally known for his hard-line views on asylum and has repeatedly clashed with Chancellor Angela Merkel over the subject.

By citing security concerns as a reason to temporarily halt deportations to Syria, however, his latest comments have put him at odds with Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the leading candidate to succeed Merkel as CDU party leader. Earlier, Kramp-Karrenbauer argued that, when in doubt, Syrian asylum seekers who had broken the law in Germany should be sent back to their home country.

The Foreign Office report warned that a return to Syria would pose a personal significant risk to many asylum seekers who had fled the civil war.

According to figures by the Federal Statistical Office, the number of newly-arrived Syrian refugees in Germany has continued to fall from its 2016 peak this year. Nevertheless, the country still accounted for the single largest number of new asylum seekers in Germany.