Two alleged Isis supporters who were born on Germany are to be deported from the country in the first such expulsion in history.
The men, who hold Algerian and Nigerian citizenship, were arrested on suspicion of planning an imminent terror attack after a gun and Isis flags were found at their homes during police raids in Göttingen.
They have not been prosecuted and the allegations have not been tested in a criminal court, but federal judges upheld their planned deportation, bolstering government plans to expel more foreign nationals believed to be terror threats.
Boris Pistorius, the interior minister for Lower Saxony, said the move sent a “nationwide signal to all fanatics, that we will give not even a centimetre for their inhuman plans”.
“They will be met with the full severity of means at our disposal – whether they have grown up here [in Germany] or not,” he added.
The two unnamed suspects launched an appeal to stay their expulsion from Germany but it was rejected by the Federal Administrative Court on Tuesday.
“This has confirmed our legal position,” Mr Pistorius said. “We have applied the sharpest sword of law governing foreigners to avert a concrete danger and I am satisfied that the court agrees with our assessment.”
The men, who hold Nigerian and Algerian citizenship through their parents, were described as having an extremist Salafist background.
They were arrested in February when investigators found two weapons, at least one of them a firearm that required no permit but had been altered to fire live ammunition.