Author: Isabelle Merminod and Tim Baster | newint.org | 5 April 2019
After nine months in jail in Chios, a neighbouring island , Abdul*, a Cameroonian asylum seeker, was released, and told that his refugee status had been recognized by Greece. ‘They said my application had been successful and that I could now apply for residence and [a] passport,’ he says.
Speaking to us in Mytilene, Lesbos, Abdul tells us hat he was arrested in July 2017 from the Moria camp with 34 others, after demonstrations had broken out against the long delays in decision-making - people who arrive on the inflatable boats have to go through an admissibility procedure which can take months.
He was picked up inside the camp by the police, beaten so badly that they broke his arm and was held for hours in the island’s police station without food. He then served a nine-month jail sentence. His story mirrors many from refugee ‘hotspots’.