People & Places
John Saadi Slo was found dead in Erbil on August 10, 2023 after being deported from Germany. Photo: submitted
DUSSELDORF, Germany - A young Yazidi man from Sharya in Duhok province, who had moved to Germany with his family, was deported without the knowledge of his parents and died hours after landing in Erbil.
John Saadi Slo, 27, arrived in Germany in 2012 and applied for asylum in the country. When he was deported to Erbil on August 10, his father Saadi thought that he was still in the German city of Aschaffenburg. However, on the evening of that unfortunate night, he received a call and was told that his son had been found dead in Erbil.
Distraught, Saadi and John’s uncle Shamo refused to believe the news and went to Aschaffenburg to ask about his whereabouts. Upon arriving at the camp where John used to stay, they were refused entry and were told that he had been “deported to Iraq” a few days earlier.
In 2010, Saadi with his family moved to Turkey and later Greece to begin his journey of migration towards Germany, but that was only the first stage of his attempt to foster a new life for his family.
“Shortly after I arrived in Greece, I had the opportunity to go to Germany, but I had to leave my three children behind in Greece, and John was one of them,” Saadi told Rudaw. John managed to reach Germany in 2012 after staying in three other EU countries.
“After a lot of suffering, John arrived in Germany in 2012. We were all settled together in a camp in Aschaffenburg and waited for five years to receive a response to our application for asylum. We received it [asylum], but John was rejected,” Saadi said, adding that the family left the camp and waited for John to eventually join them but he was denied asylum again and unable to reunite with his family.
On the evening of August 10, Erbil police contacted Yazidi officials in the Kurdistan Region’s institutions and later contacted the chief (mukhtar) of Sinai village in Sharya and informed them of John’s death.
Sihud Misto, the Yazidi representative at the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) endowment and religious affairs ministry, told Rudaw that John had made his way to a bridge near the Franso Hariri stadium in Erbil after arriving and stayed there without seeking shelter elsewhere. He had made himself a makeshift shelter from cardboard under the bridge.
“Those who saw him said he was very quiet and calm,” Misto said.
John’s body was found under the bridge on August 10, and according to Misto, there were no signs of bullet wounds or stabs or torture on his body.
Afterwards, the Sinai village chief travelled Erbil with other village figures and received John’s body.
Erbil police said that according to preliminary investigations, no crime was committed against John and he “died a normal death,” but the final results of the autopsy are yet to be announced.
John’s uncle Shamo lamented his death and blamed the German government for deporting John without informing his family.
“The German government deported John without informing his family and his sudden death has caused us deep sorrow,” Shamo, an engineer, told Rudaw.
“Nothing is known about the deportation and it is all unclear. Was he deported back to Erbil or Baghdad? We do not know what day he was deported. If his mother and father were informed of the deportation, the least they would have done is send someone to welcome John and take him back to Sharya,” he added.
Despite the unfortunate ordeal and the sufferings of the Saadi family, John could be dealt with independently as he was a 27-year-old adult, according to German law.
His family, however, is waiting for the results of the forensic report in Erbil to hire a lawyer in Germany and investigate the “injustice” that John faced in the country.
When Rudaw asked Saadi about whether John had applied for asylum in any other country, he said that he “had been fingerprinted in Greece, Bulgaria, and France. That is why he was not allowed to stay in Germany.”
“He was mentally tired. We did not feel that he had any mental illness. He went to language courses for a while and was a social person with good relationships with those around him,” Saadi said about his late son.
The German government has been stepping up efforts to send back asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected. According to information obtained by Rudaw, those who have been convicted of many crimes have been sent back to Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, but those who have fingerprints in another country will be returned to that country and not their country of origin.
Klaus Streicher, the German Consul to Erbil, on Tuesday extended his condolences to John's family, telling Rudaw that they are unable to comment further on the case at the moment "as authorities in Germany are still looking into it."
A spokesperson from the German Federal Ministry of the Interior told Rudaw earlier in August that Germany had rejected the cases of 31,000 Iraqi asylum seekers in recent years. They have been notified to leave the country.
A total of 256 Iraqis have been deported - 43 to Iraq and the rest to other countries - according to the ministry.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani headed an Iraqi delegation to Germany in January. Fuad Hussein, Iraq’s foreign minister, told Rudaw at the time that the Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz had requested Sudani to support them to find a mechanism to deport tens of thousands of Iraqis who are illegally staying in Germany.
Tens of thousands of mostly young people leave Iraq and the Kurdistan Region for Europe annually in search of a better life, using people’s smuggling routes. A number of these migrants die in freezing temperatures on the border and others drown in the sea. Many of them plan to arrive in Germany.
Thirteen years after leaving his homeland of Sharya for Europe, John had no chance of seeing his ancestral homeland again. In complete silence and away from the comfort of his mother, father, and family, his heart had stopped beating.
He was denied a residency permit and deported, and was laid to rest in the Kurdistan Region at a young twenty seven years of age.
Translation by Julian Bechocha
Updated at 6:23PM (29/08/2023)
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