Ansbach Attacker 'Feared Deportation to Bulgaria'

World » EU | July 27, 2016, Wednesday // 11:17
Bulgaria: Ansbach Attacker 'Feared Deportation to Bulgaria'

The Syrian man who blew himself up in the German town of Ansbach had raised his fears of a prospective deportation to Bulgaria, German media report.

In a letter submitted by a Nuremberg lawmaker from the Left party (Die Linke) in Germany, the 27-year-old man claims he was beaten and harassed by Bulgarian police officers upon his entry after refusing to give fingerprints. Harald Weinberg MP himself says he was prvovided with the written account by activists working to help asylum seekers. 

Reaching Bulgaria on July 16, 2013 from Turkey, his plan was to go on to Serbia but police detained at the border, the Syrian explains in the letter.

Bulgaria earlier confirmed that the man, identified by unofficial sources as Mohammad Daleel, had been granted humanitarian status in 2013 and that he left after an eight-month stint.

He was subsequently refused protection in Germany two times and authorities wanted to send him back to Bulgaria, which in turn refused to take him in, saying he had been granted status and therefore his situation was not covered by the Dublin II regulation.

The regulation in question allows for illegal migrants who have reached a given EU country to be sent back to the member state that first registered them. Bulgaria went one step further by granting him status.

Die Zeit newspaper also quotes [DE] the Syrian man as saying he had been kept locked in a cell for two months before being transferred to a refugee camp.

He says he reached Austria by plane from Sofia in order to be operated there (and was moved to a hospital after detention by Vienna authorities), since Bulgaria did not take care of him and traumas he had sustained during bombings on Aleppo in Syria and becasue of which he had metal plates in his legs and arms. It wasn't until an activist organization found him that he saw a doctor in Bulgaria, he maintains.

His wife and kids died during the bombing on his home in Aleppo, he goes on.

As authorities in Austria were planning his forced return to Bulgaria after the operation, he managed to flee for Germany.

It was because of the prospect of returning to Bulgaria that he sought protection in Germany, he writes.

The man's account cannot be independently verified.

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Tags: Ansbach attack, Ansbach, Bulgaria, Germany, humanitarian status, Mohammad Daleel

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