An aircraft approaching the taxiway of Bilbao airport last Saturday.LUIS TEJIDO (EFE)
The hope that AH, a young Egyptian who arrived at Loiu airport (Bizkaia) hidden in the hold of a plane, had of obtaining asylum in Spain lasted only 12 days. The 25-year-old stowaway traveled from Cairo to Bilbao on October 23 in temperatures of 30 degrees below zero and, after being arrested by police, asked the Spanish government for international protection because he feared for his life in his country. “My life is in danger and I am afraid for her. “I have received death threats,” he told the officers guarding him at the border. The Interior Ministry refused him asylum, which he had applied for on “religious grounds,” and neither his subsequent appeal nor the extremely precautionary measures he proposed to the regional court to prevent his deportation were successful.
The young Egyptian was finally deported this Friday on a plane that left Bilbao and will take him to Cairo after a stopover in Madrid. “He is desperate about what could happen to him in his country,” says the lawyer who supported him, Javier Galparsoro, president of the NGO Zehar Errefuxiatuekin, who has already lost communication with this person via cell phone.
Galparsoro regrets the “lack of sensitivity” of the Spanish authorities in this case, which, he assures, is the “most special” case he has had to deal with in his 44 years of experience with migrants and refugees. The lawyer explains that AH applied to enter Spain because “death was waiting for him” in his country.
The young Egyptian was sexually abused by the imam of his mosque at the age of ten, which led to his apostasy from Islam, says Galparsoso. In his letter to the Asylum and Refugee Office, he argued that he grew up in a Muslim family but decided to abandon this religion after experiencing the episodes in the mosque where his mother forced him. The applicant explained: “If you renounce your religion in Egypt, it is better for your family if you are dead, and Islam allows you to kill anyone who renounces that religion.”
Zehar’s lawyer fears for his client’s future these days: “He told me that he is homosexual. He feared that if he returned to Egypt he could be imprisoned and tortured.” After confirming his return to Egypt, Galparsoro regrets the end result: “When a person’s life, security, freedom and dignity are at stake , we can’t make any mistakes.”
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