Second Kurdish asylum seeker to be deported by Sweden in weeks

Second Kurdish asylum seeker to be deported by Sweden in weeks
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Given four weeks to leave Sweden, Nahsan Keser has said that neither he nor his wife is faced with any accusation in any criminal investigation, or with any legal action.

A Kurdish man who married a Swedish national six years ago and settled in Sweden will be deported over groundless allegations that his wife has "terror links," Duvar's Ahmet Tirej Kaya reported on Thursday.

Nahsan Keser, who was first granted a temporary residence permit for two years, consequently applied for permanent residence, and after having received no response to his application for an extended period of time, found out that Swedish Security Service SAPO was involved in the decision process.

In the interviews that ensued, Keser was asked questions about his wife by SAPO officials, and was eventually told that he could not be allowed to stay in Sweden because of his wife's "terror links."

His separate applications for permanent residence, for asylum and for work permit were rejected all at once. More recently, he was informed on 2 December that he should leave Sweden within four weeks, and that the police have the authority to detain him if he does not comply.

Keser told Duvar that neither he nor his wife is faced with any accusation in any criminal investigation, or with any legal action.

Keser's wife told Duvar that she settled in Sweden in 1990s, received a bachelor's degree, and has worked as a journalist in several media outlets including Swedish public broadcaster SVT. Speaking on condition of anonymity, she said that she has been subjected to pressure and death threats because of her reports both in Sweden and Turkey.

She also said that when she and her husband expressed their concern for their six-year-old child, they were told by the officials of the Migration Agency, "Dissolution of the family, the child being left fatherless is not more important than the security of our country."

If deported, Keser will be the second Kurdish asylum seeker to be deported by Swedish authorities in recent weeks. The day he was informed of the decision about his deportation, Mahmut Tat was extradited and handed over to Turkish officials.

The extradition of Tat and the decision to deport Keser accompany assurances by Swedish officials that Stockholm will fulfill the conditions of a trilateral deal signed in June by Sweden, Finland and Turkey. In the context of the deal, Turkey agrees to give green light to the two Nordic countries' accession to NATO provided that they crackdown on Kurdish activists implicated in terror charges, stop supporting Kurdish militia in Northern Syria, and lift arms embargoes imposed on Turkey following the latter's invasion of Syrian territories in 2019.

Turkish news agency AA cited on Wednesday Sweden's chief negotiator for NATO accession Oscar Stenstrom saying that "his country takes terrorism seriously and will fulfill the memorandum."