Kasim
"It was torture, it reminded me of prison in Iraq."
This is how Kasim describes the four years and four months he lived in Sweden while waiting to be returned to Italy under the Dublin Convention. Kasim arrived in Italy in 2001 and left after a few weeks of sleeping rough in a park. Eighteen months into his asylum procedure in Sweden he was told he would have to return to Italy, but it was another two years before he was finally put on a plane to Rome. The uncertainty, broken appointments, cancelled flights and the waiting eventually led Kasim to attempt suicide.
Kasim's decision to leave Italy for Sweden was made out of desperation. He knew nothing of the asylum procedure in Sweden, nor of the Dublin Convention. He was searching for a safe and secure place to live and when he did not find that in the first EU country he reached, he looked for it in another.
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