(Reporting by Faris Al –Rifai; Translation by Dani Murad)
(Zaman Alwasl)- Across the world, many countries seem to agree that a baby’s place is with its mother, but when a mother is put In prison, a little common sense and compassion is needed in this humanitarian situation, especially when the baby is involved.
Baybars Rahal, one of the youngest inmates in the world, is held a prisoner in a Turkish jail in the city of Antalya.The Syrian infant, who hasn’t completed his fourth year, was arrested with his mother on the stairs of a plane heading to Amsterdam, where the mother wanted to apply for asylum but was stopped by the Turkish police because she did not carry legal papers.
According to the father "Abdullah Rahal", the mother and her baby have been in prison for more than a week, and for unknown reasons, he was not able to contact or visit them.
“On Thursday 31/7/2014, my wife and baby “Baybars” were in Antalya’s Airport at 12:00 AM, where she had booked a flight to Amsterdam to apply for asylum in Netherlands, but the Turkish police jailed her for 4 hours, and I lost all contact with her, to learn later that she was put in prison with the baby without allowing her to make any calls or do anything, and a week has passed with no knowledge of her circumstances or the reasons behind the unjustified imprisonment”, he said.
Moreover, Abdullah informed Zaman Alwasl that his wife’s case was presented in front of a judge that day, who decided to put her in prison instead of releasing her and giving her the rights of asylum like many other similar cases, or at least releasing her, in the contrary, he ruled to arrest her with the baby.
On his interpretation of what happened and the reason behind the arresting decision, the husband says: “ according to the lawyer, what happened was due to a mistake made by the translator, and my wife was jailed under false pretenses, when the Turkish police claimed that we don’t have a valid address, or an official duly marriage contract, despite showing them the child's birth certificate, and our endless efforts to prove otherwise were fruitless, since they denied us the right of visitations, and calls and most importantly ignored the difficulties in registering marriages of Syrians in Turkey, and this is a major contradiction from the Turks who request documents that they themselves do not allow for Syrians “.
According to Abdullah, “there are no clear laws and instructions in regard of Syrian’s cases, in addition to the different standards and moods of airport’s officials. For example, there are thousands of similar cases that have been released in the same day, but the problem with my wife is that the judge decided her arrest because he did not know the address of residence, and according to the Turkish laws, the case will be suspended for a whole month before it’s presented again to the judge”.
“And all my efforts to obtain a conditional release for my family until the trial went in vain, since the case has got tangled in a routine legal system with no consideration that she is Syrian that should be released as hundreds of Syrians in the same condition”, he added.
Baybars’s father asks: "Why would a country that claims to be European doesn’t apply the European standards and arrests a Syrian woman with her child? And if it doesn’t have the capabilities to give them the rights of refugees, would that justify their imprisonment? And what is the law that forbids a father from visiting his child in a country that considers itself worthy of joining Europe and pretend to be interested in human rights? ".
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