Syrian family asks Minister for Justice to ‘rescue’ daughter held in Malaysia

A Syrian refugee family is pleading with Minister for Justice Helen McEntee to use her ministerial discretion to allow them “rescue” their daughter and young family, currently in a Malaysian detention centre.

Mahmud Snunu, his wife Mona and six of their children – most of them now adults – arrived in Ireland in December 2016 from Greece under the Irish Refugee Protection Programme. Now Irish citizens, they live in Co Carlow where they run a number of barber shops.

Their daughter, Nouralhuda (24), however, is in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport detention centre, with her three children Ahmet (7), Mohamed (5) and Rital (2). They are being held separately from her husband, Hussin Ibrahim, in the same centre, and face deportation back to Syria.

The parents explain they and their seven children, including then 16-year-old Nouralhuda, fled Aleppo in northern Syria in February 2014 as the Syrian Civil War raged, walking with thousands of others to Turkey. There they were granted temporary protection, which provided safety but no access to citizenship or long-term integration into Turkish society.

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In 2016, the family travelled by dinghy to Lesbos in Greece, where they were identified as refugees by the United Nations for resettlement in Ireland.

The year before, Nouralhuda had married Hussin, whom she had known in Aleppo. They stayed in Turkey, say the family, to ensure that if those headed for Greece drowned, the family would live on in them. They tried a number of times to follow them to Greece, but failed.

In February this year, following the massive earthquake and amid growing anti-Syrian sentiment in Turkey, Nouralhuda and her family looked again to get to Ireland.

“A person who works in smuggling people to Europe and lives in Turkey told them he could get them to Ireland if they go to Malaysia first,” one of Nouralhuda’s brothers told The Irish Times.

They were stopped at Kuala Lumpur airport in May trying to board a plane to Qatar, from where they planned to travel to Ireland, using false United Arab Emirates passports. UAE citizens do not need a visa to visit Ireland, while Syrian passport-holders do.

As Malaysia is not a signatory of the Geneva refugee reconvention the family was arrested. Authorities began the legal process of deporting them to Syria. The Snunu family insists Syria is not safe for them. Their son-in-law faces arrest and possible death for fleeing forced conscription in 2014 while Nouralhuda’s entire family is in Ireland.

The family applied as sponsors to bring them to Ireland on the grounds of family reunification, but was turned down in September chiefly on the grounds that Nouralhuda is an adult, and so falls outside the criteria of immediate family, and because they were unable to demonstrate ability to support them. They have appealed.

Mona becomes tearful as one of her sons describes, through an interpreter, how distressed the family is, knowing they are recognised as refugees by the UN, that Nouralhuda and her family have been recognised as needing protection by the Turkish authorities and yet they face deportation to Syria. Mahmud, asked how he is, says: “A piece of my heart is missing”.

Independent senator Tom Clonan, who is advocating for the family, describes the approach of the Irish Immigration Service as “overly bureaucratic”.

Among other reasons for the family reunification being refused were discrepancies in the English spelling of the family’s Arabic surname on different documents; failure to translate WhatsApp messages between Nouralhuda and her family, necessary to demonstrate a family connection, into English; and failure to submit birth and marriage certificates. The family says some of these got left in Syria.

A spokeswoman for the Malaysian embassy in Ireland said: “The Malaysian Government has yet to deport [the family] due to the multiple requests received from the Snunu/Ibrahim family members in Ireland and from the office of Senator Tom Clonan.

“However, they have overstayed in Malaysia and the Malaysian authorities have been very co-operative and accommodating to each request put ahead by the family. By right, they should have been deported to Syria ... Our next course of action will depend on the result of the visa application [to] the [Irish] Department of Justice.”

A spokesman for the Department of Justice would not comment on the case.

Up to November 2nd, 13,984 family reunification visas, in respect of 61 nationalities, have been granted this year, and 1,603 refused. In the same period, 347 appeals succeeded and 147 were refused.