(Reuters) Austria’s conservative-led government said on Thursday it had carried out its first deportation of a Syrian back to their home country in almost 15 years, making it the first European Union country to do so since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war.
The unnamed Syrian man had been convicted of an unspecified crime in November 2018, given a seven-year sentence and stripped of his refugee status, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said, adding that he could not go into specifics.
The Syrian man’s legal adviser, Ruxandra Staicu, declined to specify the nature of his conviction but said he was 32.
“A Syrian criminal was deported from Austria to Syria today, specifically to Damascus,” Karner told reporters, pledging that more would follow soon.
