The Munich based daily national German newspaper, The Süddeutsche Zeitung, has reported that the Bavarian Refugee Council accused the Ansbach Immigration Office in the extradition of part of a Chechen family to Poland.

According to the news, seven members of a Chechen asylum seeker family have been treated inhumanely by the Munich Immigration Office’s Ansbach district department and its supervisor, Jürgen Ludvig (a member of CSU – Christian Social Union party). The seven member Chechen asylum seeker family arrived in Germany in August 2012 through Poland, and because of the Dublin-II regulation, German authorities decided to extradite the family into Poland. However, the mother was pregnant and suffering a mental breakdown, thus she was hospitalized. Then, Ansbach Immigration Office authorities brutally tore apart the family, taking the father and three children aged 7, 11, 12 years old, and deporting them to Poland. But, because of the five month pregnant mother’s condition, she has stayed in the hospital, and her two small children, ages 1 and 2 years old, were sent to foster care. Now, the father and three children are in a kind of detention center in Poland and await the decision of the Polish authorities about their fate.

“The fact is that their juridicasition was simply wrong. It was the district office’s explicit task to ensure that the family remains united upon the deportation. This is protected by the basic law, but in addition, there is also a parliament decision to avoid the seperation of families. The responsible employee in the district Office would have immediately stopped the handover to Poland, when it was clear that the family was not complete. They cannot say that they fullfilled their duty,” said Tobias Klaus, from the Bavarian Refugee Council, a non-partisan umbrella organization which supports refugees in the Bavaria state of Germany. The organization also appealed to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) to take over the asylum procedure and allow the return of the father and three children.

After these accusations, Jürgen Ludvig opposed the claims through his spokeswomen: “The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees has ordered their handover to Poland. As a district office, we are legally bound to implement the decisions from BAMF”.

Now, the final decision and possible next steps will be determined by the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.

*Text was written by Waynakh Online and edited by Michael Capobianco