Riza Karadag - Only Way Out for Kurd Was to Die in Midair

Star Ledger

Feb 27, 2000

  Only Way Out for Kurd Was to Die in Midair By Steve Chambers   As the world celebrated the coming of a new millennium, a decidedly darker scene was playing out in a section of The Hague called Painters Quarters.   It featured 30 refugees evicted from temporary housing in the Dutch capital and would end tragically for one of them one month later and 3,600 miles away at Newark International Airport.   "The ambassador asks about the case everyday," said Nevzat Bayazit, the consulate official. "He feels very sad about it. We want to find the family and send the body back to Turkey if that is their wish."   In the Netherlands, where the case has become front-page news, coverage has focused on whether the government failed to accept a worthy asylum seeker.   "This is a very sad case, but there are so many cases here," said Iris Clarkson of the Dutch refugee Council. "We have a lot of rules now to push people out. We have an expression here . . . Fort Europe. It's hard to get in, and once you're in it's hard to win refugee status."   Karadag's case struck a chord in northern Europe, where citizens are still reeling from a similar tragedy.   In August, the decayed bodies of two African boys, ages 14 and 15, were found abroad a flight in Belgium. One carried a letter that pleaded for the youth of their continent. The letter indicated that the boys knew they might not survive the trip but believed they were risking their lives for a better future.   Airline officials said such desperate acts are rare. They said stowaways occasionally survive short flights, but most often die in extremely harsh conditions. Temperatures dip well below zero and oxygen is dangerously thin above 30,000 feet.   For many in Europe's contentious debate over immigration, Karadag has become a symbol, but those who knew him can't shake the image of an intelligent but psychologically troubled man.   "It is a pity to die in this way with no one knowing about him," said Ahmed Pouri, who runs a refugee organization in The Hague that housed Karadag the last two months of his life. "His family doesn't know anything about him. The whole story is a catastrophe."   Karadag Arrived in the Netherlands in May 1997. Like most Kurds, he was trucked in by smugglers and didn't even know which countries he had passed through on his bumpy ride.   In early asylum interviews, he told government officials that he was from a small village in Eastern Turkey and ran afoul of authorities because of his involvement in Kurdish independence movement, according to the documents described by his lawyer.   The world's 25 million Kurds are the largest ethnic group without their own sate. For thousands of years they have lived in an area that fits largely within the borders of Turkey Iraq, Iran, and Syria. They have a long history of persecution and since 1984 have waged a bloody struggle for independence against the Turkish government.   Karadag claimed to have been jailed on several occasions and said he left Turkey after a shootout with secret police. He displayed a scared hand as evidence, claiming a bullet had passed through it.   There was reason to doubt his story, however. He had serious mental problems and drifted in and out of lucidity.   "From what I can see, he got the normal procedure in which to explain himself,' said Maud Bredereo, a spokeswoman for the Dutch Ministry of Justice. "Our immigration service interviewed him several times and couldn't find . . . a reason to keep him here. Apparently, he didn't convince us."   As his case wound through the system, Karadag was housed in a government camp for refugees, but when he failed to have his paperwork stamped daily as officials require, he was kicked out.   On the streets, his erratic behavior landed him in mental hospitals several times. He told doctors he was hearing voices and having terrible, bloody visions. In a train station, he surrounded himself with a circle of burning newspapers to ward off demons.   His lawyer, Greta Later, alleges that his mental condition was never properly diagnosed and treated. She said it is possible he may have suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome related to mistreatment in Turkey, but she did not rule out schizophrenia.   The train station incident caused Karadag to be committed for three weeks. When he was released on Nov 5, he made his way to Amsterdam Airport and tried unsuccessfully to sneak abroad a plane.   Police, who caught him wearing coveralls sued by airport workers, put him on a train bound for The Hague, a 30-minute ride. He exited near the end of the line and stumbled into the offices of PRIME, a relief organization whose acronym stands for Participating Refugees in Multicultural Europe.   "At first I was afraid to give him a bed because I thought hew as not a normal person," Pouri said of the wide-eyed man who walked through the door about 9 p.m. "But then he sat there and talked about many things, about all his life story."   Pouri, an Iranian who spent 10 years underground because of political activism, was convinced Karadag was telling the truth. He was particularly moved when Karadag described a wife and 8-year-old son back home. (Turkish authorities say they have been unable to confirm that the refugee ever married or fathered a child.)   "He explained everything to me, and I trusted him," Pouri said. "He never in two months misused our hospitality."   Karadag took up residence in a building slated for demolition that PRIME was authorized to use temporarily, and he often stopped into the office to translate for fellow refugees. He could speak five Middle Eastern languages and his Dutch was excellent, according to both Pouri and Later.   Karadag had lost his asylum case in 1998, but now PRIME persuaded Later, a specialist in difficult Kurdish cases, to take it on.   Four months earlier, the Dutch government had stopped sending Kurds home while it investigated the deaths of two former asylum seekers who had returned to Turkey. The Turkish government said the pair had committed suicide, but human rights groups disputed their version of events.   By December, however, the decision had been rescinded, and Kurds were once again in danger of being extradited.   The plight of the Kurdish people is a sympathetic one in Europe, where an estimated 1 million Kurds have sought refuge. Just last week, representatives of the European Union threatened to block Turkey's admission to the economic alliance after being refused a visit with an imprisoned Kurdish leader.   "Our government is investigating the treatment of Kurds who are forced into the Army . . . and the case of a Kurd who was badly tortured," Bredero, the Dutch spokeswoman, said. "We take this very seriously."   The Turkish government, which views Kurdish separatists as terrorists, has reacted angrily to what it views as interference in its internal affairs. Last week, it accused members of the European Union as treating Turkey like a colony.   A few days before Christmas, Dutch officials forwarded the brunt of Karadag's file to Later and told her she had two weeks to convince the court why her client shouldn't be extradited.   On Jan 4, Later filed a complaint with the national ombudsman, a kind of super watchdog with authority to investigate alleged cases of government neglect. Six days later she was advised by the Ministry of Justice that Karadag had permission to return to the camps and that he would be examined by psychiatric experts.   But the letter came too later.   The same day Later was filing her complaint, PRIME held a strategy session at its headquarters. For days earlier, the 30 refugees had been evicted from their temporary housing and were sharing cramped quarters with another dozen people.   After the meeting, a downtrodden Karadag told fellow refuges he'd had enough. He gave away his possessions – three parcels that included a sleeping bag – and walked out the door.   "Here our lives are worse than the life of an animal," Pouri quoted the refugee as saying. "I have to search for my destiny."   No one knows where Karadag spent the next two weeks. Officials believed he slipped onto airport property shortly before the Northwest Airline flight left for Newark and managed to squeeze into a crevice on the underside of the plane adjacent to the wheel well.   He wrapped himself in blue plastic in a feeble effort to stay warm, but conditions at 35,000 feet above sea level were formidable. The Essex County Medical Examiner said the refugee died from a lack of oxygen and exposure.   Dutch officials concede that Karadag's case was a tragic one, but they stand by their position that he was given a fair hearing. They concede that his failure to win asylum caused his death.   "He decided to go and search for luck in another country," Charlotte Menten, another Dutch government spokeswoman, said simply. "But he was very unlucky.

  Riza Karadag - Kurd - Frozen - Midair - Newark - Amesterdam - Refugee