Netherlands: asylum seeker disappears
01 November 1995
On 27 July, an Egyptian asylum seeker, Rauf Mohamed Kilani Mosilhy was brought to Schiphol airport by two Koninklijke marechaussee employees to him on his involuntary return to Egypt. Mr Mosilhy reported himself to the Dutch authorities in mid-1994. He said he served in the Egyptian army until 1988, after which he travelled to Saudi Arabia to look for work. He was subsequently recruited by Afghan Jihad resistance fighters and went to Pakistan, from where he infiltrated several times into
Afghanistan. After the war subsided, Pakistan moved to expel the militants, but Egypt refused to admit them and Mr Mosilhy travelled to Yemen instead. Once settled there, he soon feared to be deported to Egypt where he believed he would be arrested, so he decided to flee to Holland to ask for asylum. He told the Dutch authorities that he had fled from Egypt because living conditions were very poor, and that he had never been prosecuted, but feared arrest as a sympathiser of the Moslem Brotherhood. When his request was turned down he escaped from a refugee centre in November 1994, only to be arrested again near the Dutch-German border on 1 July 1995.
At Schiphol on 27 July, Mr Mosilhy tried to physically resist being expelled. The marechaussees turned to Medicare, a private company which handles requests for medical assistance at the airport. The marechaussee, their biggest customer, frequently ask for Medicare's help when "troublesome" asylum seekers are being deported. A Medicare doctor injected the Egyptian with a sedative and he was put on board the plane. On their arrival in Cairo, the two marechaussees handed him over to the Egyptian authorities, who immediately arrested him on charges of desertion and forging identification papers. In the weeks following, family members repeatedly inquired about Mr Mosilhy's whereabouts, but the Egyptian ministry of the Interior claimed Mr Mosilhy had never entered the country, and considers the case closed.
Answering questions in the Dutch parliament, the State Secretary, Mrs Schmitz, admitted that Mr Mosilhy was injected on "medical indications" against his will. According to the Medicare doctor, he was in danger of mutilating himself and others through his violent behaviour. The Dutch Ministry of Justice says the case was handled correctly, but asylum law experts maintain the government has violated several of its own regulations, as well as the 1951 Geneva refugee treaty which forbids refoulement (ie, the returning of a refugee to a country where his life or liberty is threatened).
NRC Handelsblad, 18.11.95.