Swiss Records Reveal Taliban Data Sharing Behind Afghan Deportations

Personal data, a Geneva hotel and three deportations

Switzerland gave Taliban authorities personal information about Afghans facing removal and spent CHF13,490 on a delegation that visited Geneva from August 19 to 21, 2025, according to correspondence obtained under transparency laws. Three men were subsequently deported to Afghanistan, the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) confirmed.

The four Afghan officials stayed for two nights at the Mövenpick Hotel near Geneva airport, despite earlier Swiss statements that they had remained at the airport. They received allowances of CHF150 each per day, held diplomatic passports and had their visas facilitated by Switzerland's foreign ministry. Their programme also included a courtesy dinner.

The records, obtained by the Swiss research collective WAV, expose the practical arrangements behind a policy that depends on cooperation with Afghanistan's Taliban rulers. Swiss officials say Kabul accepts only travel documents issued by its own authorities, making identity checks necessary before people without suitable papers can be returned.

The central concern for refugee advocates is what happened to the information used for those checks. Switzerland supplied personal information sheets to the Taliban administration. Officials later asked some people facing removal for contact details of relatives in Afghanistan, requests those individuals refused.

SEM says the three men who were deported had court orders requiring their expulsion and that courts had checked whether removal was lawful. It has not disclosed the individual safety assessments or any guarantees obtained about their treatment after arrival.

Who was brought before the delegation?

The delegation conducted two identification hearings at SEM facilities inside Geneva airport. The officials had travelled from Kabul through Dubai, with Switzerland's embassy in Pakistan helping arrange the exchange of information beforehand.

The visit concerned 13 Afghan nationals. The disclosed records describe the group as people convicted of crimes whom Switzerland wanted to deport; the contemporaneous breakdown was 11 convicted offenders and two people seeking voluntary return. That difference matters because the hearings served both compulsory and voluntary departures.

Eight people were formally identified during the mission. After further inquiries in Afghanistan, the delegation confirmed the identity of a ninth. Officials agreed to issue travel documents for only six people. SEM later confirmed three deportations and said further removals were planned.

The figures show that confirming a person's identity and obtaining permission to travel were separate steps. Nine of the 13 people were eventually identified, but only six received agreement for documents. Some replies from the Afghan delegation were withheld from the transparency disclosure.

Why Kabul controls the paperwork

SEM's official Afghanistan policy page, last modified on August 4, 2025, says returns have been technically possible since the end of September 2024. It cites normal operations at Kabul airport and several airlines serving the destination.

A person returning voluntarily or under compulsion must nevertheless hold a valid passport or laissez-passer issued by the authorities in Kabul since August 2021. A laissez-passer is a travel document that allows someone without a suitable passport to make a particular journey.

SEM's Afghan identity document assessment explains why access to official records has become difficult. It places the Afghan mission in Switzerland among those not recognised by the Taliban government. On July 30, 2024, Taliban authorities suspended recognition of consular services at most Afghan missions in Europe, Canada and Australia, including documents, passport extensions and visas.

SEM had also described a restriction dating to late 2023 under which Kabul accepted only travel documents issued directly there for returns. The wider consular decision in July 2024 affected a broader range of services.

The official assessment says missions controlled by the Taliban can access electronic identity records and foreign ministry certification databases, and request passport information from the interior ministry. Missions without working relations with Kabul lack that access. Paper identity documents, known as tazkiras, are often incomplete and have so few verifiable security features that checking their authenticity is usually impossible.

A technical visit with diplomatic arrangements

A June 23, 2025 letter from Switzerland's embassy in Pakistan used formal diplomatic language to transmit a SEM letter to the Afghan foreign ministry. Other correspondence described the visitors as a technical delegation carrying out a consular mission.

SEM defended the language used in the exchange, explaining its position on diplomatic courtesy:

such polite phrases are an integral part of international communication and cannot be used to draw political conclusions

The arrangements went beyond the airport hearings. Although an email said no official meetings were planned in Switzerland, the programme listed a courtesy dinner for up to nine people. Hotel accommodation was outside the airport perimeter, and SEM organised transport between the hotel and airport.

The expense records included meals as well as the daily allowances, which authorities said covered costs associated with meetings and local transport. All four visitors carried diplomatic passports, but SEM said none enjoyed immunity.

Switzerland maintains that facilitating the visit did not recognise the Taliban as Afghanistan's government. SEM also said it intended to use occasional visits rather than permanently accredit Taliban officials, an approach contrasted at the time with Germany's arrangements.

How Switzerland reached this point

Swiss returns to Afghanistan developed along two tracks: removals of convicted offenders and a later policy change affecting certain men whose asylum applications were rejected. Criminal deportations had already restarted before the broader change in April 2025.

The key dates explain how the Geneva visit fitted into that process:

• August 2021: The Taliban returned to power. Swiss compulsory returns remained blocked after earlier disruption during the pandemic.
• Autumn 2024: Switzerland resumed deporting convicted Afghan offenders. SEM says returns became technically possible from the end of September.
• March 1, 2025: SEM confirmed that five convicted offenders had been returned since the previous autumn.
• Mid-April 2025: SEM began considering removal reasonable for a specified group of healthy adult Afghan men with reliable support in Afghanistan.
• August 19 to 21, 2025: Four Taliban officials visited Geneva to conduct identification hearings.
• September 22, 2025: Social Democratic parliamentarian Jean Tschopp questioned the government about the visit.

The five men returned by March 2025 had received prison sentences exceeding one year and expulsion orders. SEM said their identities had been established by Afghan authorities before the Taliban takeover, although recent arrangements had also involved contact with Afghanistan's mission in Geneva.

The three deportations confirmed after the August delegation belong to a later stage of this process. The records do not provide a complete running total of every Swiss removal to Afghanistan.

Different rules for different groups

Justice Minister Beat Jans had decided that Afghan offenders with judicial expulsion orders should be removed after serving their sentences. SEM spokesperson Daniel Bach explained the government's position as a balance in which protecting the Swiss public from convicted offenders outweighed concerns about the Taliban's human rights abuses.

SEM says it examines each offender's case for a risk of persecution or serious human rights violations. For convicted offenders, however, it does not carry out the same assessment of whether removal is medically or humanitarily reasonable that applies to other rejected asylum seekers.

The April 2025 policy applies to adult Afghan men who are healthy, alone in Switzerland and have a stable, reliable support network in Afghanistan that can help them rebuild their social and working lives. If their asylum applications are rejected, they can be ordered to leave rather than receive temporary admission.

Temporary admission allows someone to remain when a removal order cannot be carried out under the applicable conditions. SEM says it may review existing temporary admissions individually. Recognised refugees who have been granted asylum are unaffected by the April change.

At the time of the August visit, around 20 men covered by the revised asylum policy had received removal orders. Two orders were final, while the others awaited Federal Administrative Court decisions. SEM was also seeking to remove around 20 convicted offenders, a separate group.

Why the transfer of data alarms advocates

Elisa Turtschi, a coordinator at the Observatory on the Rights of Asylum and Foreigners in French-speaking Switzerland, said the disclosure was especially serious because the people concerned had sought protection in Switzerland. She described the risk in these terms:

It is extremely serious that the SEM is disclosing personal information about people who came to Switzerland seeking protection; and all the more so when it is shared with a regime that systematically violates human rights.

The requests for relatives' contact details extended the concern beyond the people facing removal. Those details would have given Afghan authorities a way to contact family members while checking identities. The people asked refused to provide them.

Lea Hungerbühler of AsyLex, an organisation defending refugee rights, also questioned cooperation with the Taliban and the transfer of personal and administrative information. Her concerns included the treatment of returnees at a facility at Kabul airport.

Swiss officials also disclosed the assistance available for return: up to CHF6,000 for voluntary departure, compared with CHF500 for forced return. The maximum voluntary payment was 12 times the compulsory return payment. Such payments are intended to help people restart their lives, while the data dispute concerns what authorities in Afghanistan learn about them before and during that process.

What happens after arrival in Kabul?

The Taliban delegates said returnees were registered and housed for three days at an airport facility in Kabul. Hungerbühler raised concerns about people being held there while Afghan authorities checked for outstanding sentences.

SEM said it had received no negative reports from people who had voluntarily returned to their countries of origin. It also said it knew of no cases in which deportees held at the Kabul facility were subsequently brought before a court. Its response provided no account of the later circumstances of the three men removed after the Geneva visit.

Swiss police did not accompany deportees all the way to Kabul during the earlier returns confirmed in March 2025. SEM explained that safety on the ground could not be guaranteed. The removals used scheduled commercial flights.

Amnesty International spokesperson Beat Gerber said the human rights situation remained poor and the safety of returnees could not be guaranteed. Amnesty has called on Switzerland to halt deportations to Afghanistan, citing the danger of serious abuses.

SEM's own country assessment describes improved security and a slight improvement in socioeconomic conditions alongside a continuing deterioration in human rights, particularly for women. Its policy for Afghan women and girls, introduced in July 2023, recognises that discriminatory restrictions and religious persecution can justify refugee status, with applications examined individually.

The dispute over recognition and safeguards

Jean Tschopp, the Social Democratic parliamentarian who questioned the government on September 22, 2025, said the newly disclosed arrangements appeared to exceed a simple consular service. He also challenged the government over protection for those returned.

Tschopp described his concern about the relationship with the Taliban and the missing guarantees:

this approach legitimises an authoritarian regime, while it is unclear what guarantees, if any, were obtained in return regarding the fate of the people concerned.

Switzerland's position is that practical dealings over identity papers can take place without diplomatic recognition. For those facing removal, the immediate consequences are concrete: their details pass to authorities in Kabul, those authorities decide whether to issue documents, and a Swiss removal order can then be enforced.

The disclosure also places the government's assurances about the visit under scrutiny. The hearings took place at the airport, but accommodation was outside it. A mission described as technical involved visas, diplomatic passports, public spending and a planned dinner.

SEM says further deportations are planned, without giving dates. The pending court cases over the broader April policy will help determine how far removals can extend beyond convicted offenders. The unresolved issue for the people concerned is what protection Switzerland secures when it hands over their information and returns them to Taliban rule.

Key Points

• Four Taliban officials visited Geneva from August 19 to 21, 2025, for identification hearings involving 13 Afghans.
• Switzerland shared personal information sheets and spent CHF13,490 on the visit.
• The delegates stayed at a hotel outside the airport, contrary to earlier statements that they remained at the airport.
• Nine people were eventually identified, documents were agreed for six, and SEM confirmed three subsequent deportations.
• Criminal deportations resumed in autumn 2024. A broader policy for certain rejected Afghan asylum seekers followed in April 2025.
• SEM says courts verified the lawfulness of the three removals. Refugee advocates question data sharing and safeguards after arrival.
• Switzerland says the arrangements did not constitute recognition of the Taliban government.