Overview

• Berlin police detained a 26-year-old Afghan convert outside Dreieinigkeitskirche on July 28 and deported him to Sweden under the EU’s Dublin Regulation on August 1.
• Two other Afghan converts remain sheltered in the Berlin church even after Hamburg formally requested their transfer.
• Mayor Peter Tschentscher decried Berlin’s resistance as a “systematic misuse of church asylum” and said it dealt a serious blow to the rule of law.
• The Berlin Senate defended its political directive to respect Kirchenasyl and invited Hamburg to deploy its own officers to carry out the handover.
• The Dreieinigkeitskirche contends that returning converted Christians to Sweden amounts to a death sentence in Afghanistan, framing the dispute as a clash between humanitarian protection and legal obligations.