German police have launched an investigation to find out how a Syrian deportee was able to sneak a nail file on board his plane and stop his family’s expulsion by threatening officials with it. They were set to be returned to Spain, where their asylum application was to be reviewed according to the Dublin III Regulation, the German magazine Stern points out.
As Frankfurter Neue Presse reports, citing the police, three officials brought the 33-year-old man, his wife and three kids onto a plane, bound to take them to Barcelona, at Frankfurt-am-Main’s airport. The man then suddenly pulled something sharp out of his pocket, which his initially thought was a knife.
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The destressed man demanded that his family’s deportation be stopped. Two officials immediately took their weapons out, while a third addressed the Syrian man. He was able to calm him down and persuade him to lay the suspected weapon on the floor, after which he let policemen escort him off the plane. They only discovered that he had threatened them with a simple nail file after his arrest, the Frankfurter Neue Presse reports. The deportation was eventually stopped as the family was brought to the police station.
