Three Iranians refused, on Monday January 23, to board flights which were to take them from Brussels to Turkey, a country from which they risk, they say, then being expelled to Tehran. The asylum applications they submitted in Belgium were recently rejected, while two of them say they fear for their lives if they are forced to return to Iran, where they would have taken part in the demonstrations against the power.
Members of a support group had gathered at Zaventem airport to protest against the expulsion, in the morning, of Ali Aghaei Khaneghahi, aged about forty, then, in the aftermath -noon, of Hesam Alireza, 22, and his cousin Mohammad Reza Hamian, 21. These two young men claim that they left their country in October 2022, when the police sent them summonses. According to these documents, seen by journalists from the public channel RTBF but not authenticated, they would have had to explain their participation in ” riots and disturbances to public order “. The cousins say they demonstrated in Anzali, a port city in Guilan province to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, arrested in September for a veil judged “ badly worn » .
In December 2022 and at the beginning of January, the Immigration Office, then the General Commissioner for Refugees and Stateless Persons and, finally, the Aliens Litigation Council – an independent board of appeal – did not find their explanations convincing. ; both men cited the poor functioning of the Internet in Iran as the reason for their difficulties in providing further evidence. For their support committee, the executions carried out by the regime – four men have been hanged in recent weeks – are reason enough for Belgium not to expel them.
Returned to Turkey
The Belgian authorities hide behind the fact that the two asylum seekers would not be sent back to Iran, but to Turkey, which would not have – at this stage at least – issued a deportation order to their against. Questioned on Monday, the Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, Nicole de Moor, also maintains that the analysis of the file of the two young people was “individual and meticulous” and that we cannot consider that all Iranians are today threatened by the regime. The two young men would also have family in Turkey, argues Belgium.
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