Sweden: Iraqi doctor on the run
01 November 1997
In June 1997 the Swedish government, after receiving reports from the Swedish security police, decided to expel the Iraqi medical doctor Zewar al-Dabbagh to Iraq. Al-Dabbagh arrived in Sweden in September 1986 with his three children, and is to be expelled for 10 years for spying. In Iraq he risks torture and the death penalty for refusing to take part in the Kuwait war as an army doctor.
The first indication that he might be expelled was in March 1994. He was then working as a specialist at a hospital in Stockholm and applied for political asylum and a permanent residence permi, having received temporary permission between 1986 and 1993. The Swedish security police opposed it. As is common in Sweden, no explanation was given to al-Dabbagh nor his lawyer. This started the struggle to find out what information the security police based its decision upon.
Now, this information has leaked out. The main accusation is that he had been working closely with the Iraqi intelligence service. This is based on a claim that in 1989 in Gothenburg he was on a mission for the Iraqi intelligence service and met a female Iraqi agent who handed over an envelope to him. The envelope is said to have contained information about civil and military harbours in the south of Sweden. Al-Dabbagh strongly denies this. He admits that in October 1989, together with a colleague from the hospital, he was invited to a medical course in Gothenburg. Before going there, in his capacity as a foreign student with an Iraqi scholarship, he went to the Iraqi embassy to get money for the train ticket, hotel and food. At the embassy the information attaché, Adbul Hussein, asked him if he would bring a book back from Gothenburg to Stockholm. This book was to be handed over to him by an Iraqi woman. Al-Dabbagh agreed. When he met the woman in a Gothenburg cafe, the "book" turned out to be an envelope containing a set of documents. This led to a row between al-Dabbagh and the woman, ending in al-Dabbagh refusing to take the envelope. He consequently never gave anything to the Iraqi embassy. It should be noted that all this happened 8 years ago and al-Dabbagh did not have any problem after receiving a continuous temporary residence permit nor did it affect him getting work.
Another accusation against him is that in a European capital he met Iraqi agents who tried to make him spy on Iraqi refugees. This is true, al-Dabbagh admits, but he always refused and the Swedish security police do not claim that he ever accepted. At the end of the 1980s al-Dabbagh had gone by train from Stockholm to Uppsala with an employee from the Iraqi embassy - escorting him to a dissertation presentation in Uppsala by an Iraqi research student. He met the same person again in 1990 at a party at the embassy. In July 1994 he visited the embassy with a friend in order to find out the Iraqi law on deserters after the Kuwait war.
Helena Nilsson MP, a member of the National Police Board, says that not one member of the Board was or are prepared to check the accuracy of the information handed out by the security police. "This is not my task - all we are to do is to discuss budget, legislation, new methods for modus operandi and new threats against Swedish national security, all in general terms. At the end of the day, we must show faith in the Swedish security police and its work."
The European Commission for Human Rights rejected al-Dabbagh's complaint in September this year as manifestly ill-founded. Immediately after this decision al-Dabbagh left Sweden to go to the middle-east where he tried to get jobs at university hospitals. However, he was always turned down because he could not provide a residence permit for Sweden for the previous ten years and had to admit that he had been expelled by the Swedish security police. Finally, he went to the Swedish press which wrote his story showing that he could not get work, permission to stay anywhere and had no chance of be