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Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is expected in Berlin on Tuesday for talks, as German officials seek to step up deportations of Syrians, despite unease about continued instability in their homeland.Sharaa is scheduled to meet his counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German president’s office said.Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s office has yet to announce whether he would also hold talks with Sharaa during the visit.Since ousting Syria’s longtime leader Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, Sharaa has made frequent overseas trips as the former Islamist rebel chief undergoes a rapid reinvention.He has made official visits to the United States and France, and a series of international sanctions on Syria have been lifted. The focus of next week’s visit for the German government will be on stepping up repatriations of Syrians, a priority for Merz’s conservative-led coalition since Assad was toppled. Roughly one million Syrians fled to Germany in recent years, many of them arriving in 2015-16 to escape the civil war.In November Merz, who fears being outflanked by the far-right AfD party on immigration, insisted there was “no longer any reason” for Syrians who fled the war to seek asylum in Germany.”For those who refuse to return to their country, we can of course expel them,” he said.- ‘Dramatic situation’ -In December, Germany carried out its first deportation of a Syrian since the civil war erupted in 2011, flying a man convicted of crimes to Damascus.But rights groups have criticised such efforts, citing continued instability in Syria and evidence of rights abuses.Violence between the government and minority groups has repeatedly flared in multi-confessional Syria since Sharaa came to power, including recent clashes between the army and Kurdish forces. Several NGOs, including those representing the Kurdish and Alawite Syrian communities in Germany, have urged Berlin to axe Sharaa’s planned visit, labelling it “totally unacceptable”. “The situation in Syria is dramatic. Civilians are being persecuted solely on the basis of their ethnic or religious affiliation,” they said in a joint statement.”It is incomprehensible to us and legally and morally unacceptable that the German government knowingly intends to receive a person suspected of being responsible for these acts at the chancellery.”The Kurdish Community of Germany, among the signatories of that statement, also filed a complaint with German prosecutors in November, accusing Sharaa of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.There have also been voices urging caution within government.On a trip to Damascus in October, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said that the potential for Syrians to return was “very limited” since the war had destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure.But his comments triggered a backlash from his own conservative Christian Democratic Union party.

The protest movement in Iran has subsided after a crackdown that has killed thousands under an internet blackout, monitors said Friday, one week after the start of the biggest protests in years challenging the Islamic republic’s theocratic system.The threat of new military action by the United States against Iran has also appeared to have receded for the time being, with a Saudi official saying Gulf allies have persuaded President Donald Trump to give the Iranian leadership a “chance”.Protests sparked by economic grievances started with a shutdown in the Tehran bazaar on December 28 but turned into a mass movement demanding the removal of the clerical system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 revolution.People started pouring into the streets in big cities from January 8 but authorities immediately enforced a shutdown of the internet that has lasted over a week and activists say is aimed at masking the scale of the crackdown.The repression has “likely suppressed the protest movement for now”, said the US-based Institute for the Study of War, which has monitored the protest activity.But it added: “The regime’s widespread mobilisation of security forces is unsustainable, however, which makes it possible that protests could resume.”Norway-based rights group Iran Human Rights (IHR) says 3,428 protesters have been verified to have been killed by security forces, but warns this could be a fraction of the actual toll.Its director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said authorities under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have “committed one of the gravest crimes of our time”.He cited “horrifying eyewitness accounts” received by IHR of “protesters being shot dead while trying to flee, the use of military-grade weapons and the street execution of wounded protesters”.Lama Fakih, programme director at Human Rights Watch, said the killings since last week “are unprecedented in the country”.Monitor Netblocks said that the “total internet blackout” in Iran had now lasted over 180 hours, longer than a similar measure that was imposed during 2019 protests.- ‘Give Iran a chance’ -Trump, who backed and joined Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in June, had not ruled out new military action against Tehran and made clear he was keeping a close eye on if any protesters were executed.But with the belligerent rhetoric on all sides appearing to tone down for now, a senior Saudi official told AFP on Thursday that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman led “a long, frantic, diplomatic last-minute effort to convince President Trump to give Iran a chance to show good intention”.While Washington appeared to have stepped back, the White House said Thursday that “all options remain on the table for the president”. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday that “the president understands today that 800 executions that were scheduled and supposed to take place yesterday were halted”.Iran is the most prolific user of capital punishment after China. But there has been no suggestion from Iranian authorities — or rights activists who have repeatedly condemned a recent surge in hangings before the protest wave — that so many people were due to be executed in a single day. Attention had focused on the fate of a single protester, Erfan Soltani, a 26-year-old who rights activists and Washington said was set to be executed as early as Wednesday.The Iranian judiciary confirmed Soltani was under arrest but said he had not been sentenced to death and his charges meant he did not risk capital punishment. – ‘All Iranians united’ -Asked about a New York Times report that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Trump against strikes, Leavitt said: “Look, it’s true that the president spoke with (him), but I would never give details about their conversation without… the express approval by the president himself.”The US Treasury also announced new sanctions targeting Iranian officials on Thursday including Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council for National Security.Despite the internet shutdown, new videos from the height of the protests, with locations verified by AFP, showed bodies lined up in the Kahrizak morgue south of Tehran, as distraught relatives searched for loved ones.At the UN Security Council in New York, Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, invited to address the body by Washington, said “all Iranians are united” against the clerical system in Iran. Iran’s representative at the meeting Gholamhossein Darzi accused Washington of “exploitation of peaceful protests for geopolitical purposes.”