Dutch Police Use “Disproportional” Force to Dismantle Asylum Seeker Camp

25 May 2012   Police intervened to break up an impromptu camp established by failed asylum seekers near Ter Apel, the Netherlands. Riot police arriving in 20 minibuses used force to dismantle the site and arrested about 110 individuals at the site, failed asylum seekers from Iran and Somalia who claim that they will come…

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Moroccan Asylum Seeker Returns to Netherlands

7 October 2011   Hassan Bakir, secretary general of Moroccan Islamist group Shabiba Islamiyya, was arrested in Spain while on vacation with his family, and detained for the past two months while Spanish courts rule on is possible extradition to Morocco. Bakir had been living in the Netherlands since 2005. In 1985 at the age…

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Albania: Asylum for former Guantanamo inmates

Two years ago, four Uighurs were released from the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay. They belonged to a Muslim minority group in China who had traveled to Pakistan via Afghanistan because they alleged they had suffered human rights abuses in their home country. In 2000, Pakistani police arrested the men and transferred them to…

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Iraqi Bush-shoe-thrower seeks Swiss asylum

Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who made headlines after throwing his shoes at US president George W. Bush at a press conference in December, is planning to apply for political asylum in Switzerland. Al-Zaidi, who has been held in Iraq awaiting trial for the act, has reportedly suffered injuries to his eye, broken ribs, and internal…

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Bin Laden’s son seeks and is denied political asylum in Spain

Spain has rejected an asylum request from Omar Osama bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden, after deciding that he did not meet the condition necessary for him to remain in the country. “The Interior Ministry has not accepted the request for asylum because this does not meet the conditions necessary for entering Spain,”…

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