Danish court hands Kurdish refugee prison sentence following attempted deportation ​

Layal Shakir

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Danish court sentenced a Kurdish woman from western Iran (Rojhelat) to a month in prison after she was beaten up by the police while seeking sanctuary in a refugee camp in Denmark, reported a rights group on Sunday.

Claiming to be the Danish deportation services, around 20 people stormed a refugee camp last week in Denmark, where Qadam Kher Haqanizadeh has been sheltering for several years along with her two children and husband. 

Using excessive forces, Haqanizadeh was handcuffed and pushed inside a minivan to be forced back to the land she has fled from, Iran.

“The judge said that Qadam Kher [Haqanizadeh] must be detained until the end of the administrative process for the deportation case of her children, her husband, and herself, and they will be subsequently deported,” Hengaw Organization for Human Rights quoted the husband, Sirus Azizizadeh as saying.

Until the family is deported to Iran, Haqanizadeh will stay in detention, the husband noted.

The state-owned Iranian Press TV on Saturday said the Iranian ambassador to Copenhagen had called on the Danish authorities to apologize for the “inhumane behavior” committed against the family and to hold the perpetrators accountable.

The Danish immigration minister was summoned to a parliamentary committee regarding the incident, the Danish DR reported earlier. 

Following the violent attack, Haqanizadeh and her two sons were taken to Istanbul and were scheduled to forcibly fly to Iran at the time.

Khalil Azizi, Haqanizadeh’s cousin, told Rudaw on Thursday that Haqanizadeh had resisted boarding the plane back to Tehran with her face covered in blood. The horrific scene outraged the passengers on the flight, preventing the mother and her two children from flying out.

The three were sent back to Denmark.

Among the European countries, Denmark has been at the forefront in enacting laws and policies designed to deter people from seeking asylum.

The Human Rights Watch last month criticized Denmark’s “mismatched” treatment of Syrian and Ukrainian refugees as Russia’s war forces thousands of people out of their homes. 

Azizizadeh and his family left their home in Kermanshah in 2014, traveling to Turkey and then to Denmark after claiming that their life was in danger in Iran.

Being a blacksmith in Iran, Azizizadeh was arrested by Iranian intelligence under the pretext of being connected to the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) in 2014.

The KDPI is a Kurdish party that has waged an on-and-off armed war against the Iranian government since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.