At the Gates of Fortress Europe
January 02, 2025 at 04:30PMSajjad Mohammedhasan arrived in Lithuania in July 2021 after fleeing Iraq, flying to Belarus, and trekking overland into the country. He told the first person he encountered at the border than he wanted to claim asylum—in Baghdad, he’d been receiving death threats, and his girlfriend had disappeared. Instead, guards took his passport and phone, handcuffed him, and brought him to a border prison. He spent a full year bouncing between cells and hearings before being released, driving to Germany and trying, again, to request asylum. Caitlin Chandler chronicles his journey and tells the story of Europe’s chaotic conglomeration of migration laws—and it’s not a pretty one.
Back at the camp they dragged Sajjad inside a giant refrigerator. He knew other men who had been put there as punishment for trying to escape. Arab inmates called it ghorfa al-sa’ada: “the happiness room.” It was too dark for him to see his own hands. The motor of the cooling fan droned in his ears. To ward off the cold, he rubbed the pepper spray from his arms onto other parts of his body. His insides ached. He was imprisoned there at least a few hours, possibly longer. It occurred to him that he had traveled a long way to die. The thought amused him.
Finally two officers came inside and handcuffed him again. One of them pulled his hands up behind his back, making him stumble as he walked; when he fell, they smacked him with their batons. The pair paraded him through the camp and released him. The other men helped Sajjad into bed. His friend Bahar wrapped his wounds with gauze; the authorities did not call a doctor. After a few days, they returned his belongings. Once he was well enough to move around, he helped a group that was plotting a new escape. They started to dig a tunnel, working in the middle of the night. Sajjad kneeled on the ground and used a tent peg.
On September 25, helmeted men with black balaclavas and automatic weapons arrived at the camp and, over three days, moved all the inmates onto buses. Sajjad thought about trying to slip away, but there was nowhere to hide. When he left Rūdninkai, the tunnel was some nine meters long. Another five meters, and it would have been complete.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/01/02/at-the-gates-of-fortress-europe/
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