Africa-Press – Gambia. Eighteen Gambians have been deported from Germany on a flight that transited through Spain arriving in Banjul on Wednesday morning.
The deportees include 15 male and a woman with her two children. According to a prominent migration activist Ebrima Drammeh, permanently based in Europe but currently on a visit to The Gambia, unlike previous instances where deportees were put in chains and shackles, these new arrivals were not in cuffs. But he said Immigration and other security officers at the airport denied him access to talk to the deportees.
He said representatives of the EU and Gambia Immigration Department were at the airport to facilitate transportation for the deportees to their various destinations in two separate buses.
Contacted for comments, the director of diaspora and migration at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ndumbeh Saho declined to comment on the matter, saying we needed to write formally to the Ministry.
In 2017, the European Union and The Gambia government agreed on a Good Practice Document to accept deportation of Gambians from Germany. It is believed that more than 2,000 Gambian migrants who have exhausted their asylum appeals in Germany are awaiting repatriation.
The EU has since raised concerns over what it calls Gambia’s “lack of cooperation” on readmission of nationals illegally staying in the EU and had temporarily suspended the application of certain provisions in the visa code to nationals of The Gambia.
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