No Such Thing As A Neat Ending

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday August 4, 2007

James Button

Mohammed Sagar was not allowed to pass through Australia, because he had been denied a visa. So in February the Iraqi asylum seeker had to make a journey just as tortuous, though far quicker, than the one that landed him in detention 5 1/2 years before.

Over three days, he flew from Nauru to the Solomon Islands, then to Suva, Seoul, Paris and Stockholm, before taking a flight to Oernskoeldsvik, a city in northern Sweden. In Nauru it was 30 degrees, in Oernskoeldsvik minus 30. He had never seen a frozen sea.

For a time Sagar was the last man on Nauru. He spent nearly 4 1/2 years in the offshore detention centre, the last six months effectively alone. (A group of Burmese eventually arrived but Sagar had almost no contact with them.)

For 10 years he had been on the move: from Iraq to Iran then Malaysia and Indonesia, where he caught the "children overboard" boat that sank off Australia in October 2001. After 11 months in detention on Manus Island he was sent to Nauru.

In December, Sweden did what Australia refused to do and granted him asylum. At last it seemed his journey was over. But it is not.

Although Australian officials accepted his refugee claim - acknowledging he had a genuine fear of persecution if he returned to Iraq - in 2005 ASIO classed him as a security risk, and so Australia denied him protection. Yet when Swedish security officers interviewed him, they deemed him to be no threat.

Sagar is now determined to compel the Australian Government either to reveal why it judged him to be a security risk - ASIO has not made its reasons public - or to admit the assessment was wrong.

"This is critical for me," he says. "The Australian Government has caused me a lot of damage. They have to say they made a mistake. Even if their apology is not very deep I feel I deserve that apology. My main goal in life now is to achieve justice. Without it I can't settle down. I can't move on."

It is 10.30pm but still light outside a yellow, wooden house in a suburb of Oernskoeldsvik, a city of 50,000 people nestled amid forests and lakes 500 kilometres north of Stockholm.

In a ground-floor window, a young woman is cooking at a stove. But the reassuring scene is deceptive: the house is split into three flats and Sagar lives alone in the basement. His room is small and dark - the windows are high and covered with a curtain - and the ceiling is low enough to touch. There is a bed, a small table with two chairs, a hotplate and a sink.

"Var sa gud, as we say in Swedish. Here you are."

Sagar has cooked a huge pot of delicious chicken soup and insists with a grin that we finish it. But he eats less; his past is eating him.

In the corner is a laptop computer, where Sagar spends his days, from morning to night. As it was on Nauru, the computer "is the most important thing in the world for me, even more important than food and water. I must have communication."

He writes to the refugee advocate Susan Metcalfe, Melbourne University law student Jessie Taylor - with whom he had a few carefree days in Paris in June - and his lawyer, the Melbourne QC Julian Burnside.

Sagar seems to attract supporters: Nauru's Foreign Minister, David Adeang, said he had "a real soft spot" for him. A Dutch psychiatrist formerly on Nauru, Dr Maarten Dormaar, travelled all the way to Oernskoeldsvik to see him.

He awaits news of his case in Australia, where ASIO has appealed against a Federal Court decision that it must release documents showing why it believes Sagar is a security risk. The case returns to court next month.

Occasionally, he hears from Mohammad Faisal, the second-last Iraqi asylum seeker on Nauru, who was moved to Brisbane a year ago when it looked as if he might commit suicide and has since been granted a permanent visa.

Sagar says he is stronger than Faisal but by the end of his time on Nauru felt that his mind was heading in the same direction. He still feels fragile. "Yes, I am lonely," he says. "I would like some friends."

He feels enormous gratitude to Sweden. "The Australian Government took away my life, the Swedish Government gave it back," he says. And the Swedes "are lovely, really lovely. Not for one minute have I felt a stranger here. It's amazing."

It helps that he seems remarkably fluent in Swedish, a famously hard language. He took a three-month course as part of his resettlement package and, says Mikael Nordstroem, an immigrant counsellor with the Oernskoeldsvik council, "did extremely well. He is very smart, very talented when it comes to language. Nordstroem has spent a lot of time with Sagar.

His situation is better in every way, except one. Now that he has time to think, feelings long suppressed are emerging. "He has a lot of sorrow in his backpack," Nordstroem says.

"There are many things he has not dealt with and he has to do that in order to move forward. The main reason for his problems is the way he was treated in Iraq. But instead of getting help he was stranded on Nauru."

It is easy to see Sagar's missing fingertips as he sits at the table. A Shiite Muslim, he was 15 when Saddam Hussein's troops entered the southern city of Najaf to suppress the Shiite uprising after the first Gulf War in 1991.

Sagar's family fled to the desert as the massacres of Shiites began. They returned to find their house destroyed by a rocket. While clearing rubble Sagar touched a bomb that blew away part of his hand and left him with permanent damage to a leg.

In 1997, he says, the family fled to Iran after hearing rumours they were in danger. Sagar's father worked as an assistant to Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, then Iraq's leading Shiite cleric.

Two years later al-Sadr was murdered, almost certainly by the Iraqi regime. In 2003 the ayatollah's son, Moqtada al-Sadr, became a chief antagonist of the United States-led forces in Iraq.

Did ASIO deem Sagar a security risk because of his father's connections? If so, it would be a sharp irony, as few people were happier than Sagar to see Saddam, Australia's enemy, toppled.

When his family left Iraq he was 21 and about to begin tertiary study. Life was "very difficult" for Iraqis in Iran, and when he was unable to study he decided to leave. A job as a construction company manager paid well enough for him to save $US2000 for a flight to Malaysia and to buy a place on a boat from Indonesia to Australia.

On Nauru he began a computer science degree but stopped after "severe psychiatric problems". He still dreams of being a well-paid computer scientist but says he has inadequate qualifications to enter a Swedish university. "I have lost five years of my life," he says many times. At 31 he feels time is running out.

Yet he also feels lucky to be in Sweden. While an estimated 2 million people have fled Iraq since the start of the latest war, Britain accepted just 12 per cent of the 1000 or so who applied for asylum last year.

The United States took only 200 Iraqis last year, though it promises to take 7000 this year. In 2005-06 Australia took 2000 of 24,000 Iraqi applicants (about 8 per cent), government figures show.

Sweden, by contrast, has accepted 90 per cent of 18,000 Iraqis to seek asylum since the start of last year. It pays any employer who hires refugees 80 per cent of their salary for three years. As a result, half of all Iraqis who get to Europe seek asylum in Sweden. It suddenly has a community of 80,000 Iraqis, among 9 million Swedes.

Feeling the strain, it has recently tightened entry conditions and in April appealed to its European Union partners to share the load. It also spreads refugees around the country in an effort to avoid clusters. That is how Sagar came to Oernskoeldsvik.

On arrival, he was given a flat 50 kilometres from the city centre. He was too isolated, he told Nordstroem, he would go crazy living so far out. Yet the city has a housing shortage and Nordstroem found the basement flat with difficulty.

What's more, Oernskoeldsvik has very few psychiatrists or mental health nurses, and Sagar faces a six-month wait for help. Every day he checks online notices for jobs and housing in Stockholm. While he is open-minded about his future, he feels the capital might offer him opportunities that Oernskoeldsvik cannot.

This worries Nordstroem, who feels that Stockholm may be a harsher, lonelier place for a stranger without any support. While Oernskoeldsvik has few refugees, the 600 or so who have come have in the main integrated well, he says.

"I think we are blessed in this city. There are very few racists. Of course people are afraid of the unknown and Mohammed is a different colour. But people are also curious [about newcomers]."

For example, Nordstroem says, when he approached Sagar's future landlord about the flat, the man was reluctant. But he was persuaded to see Sagar, and after they talked for 20 minutes the man said he liked him and would rent to him. "I think he saw that the unknown was not so frightening after all."

Nordstroem says Sagar is not going to find friends "in the basement on his computer. He must go out into the real world. I say to him, 'Go to the library, read a newspaper, try to talk to your neighbour. Start cooking classes or night courses. Go to a cafe, buy a coffee, maybe talk to the person next to you. You may miss something if you don't."'

When this is put to Sagar, he frowns. "What am I going to do? Go up and say hello to people in the street? I can't do that."

Nordstroem had recommended a program that links local people with immigrants. Sagar joined. But the man he was introduced to, while kind, was busy. "I completely understand that," Sagar says. "He has no time. Time is the one thing I have."

"The hardest thing for him is acceptance," Nordstroem says. "He is in a hurry, but I actually think he needs to slow down. He needs time to realise that his ideal future will not happen. He has to come to an agreement with himself: 'OK, this has happened. I have lost five years. How do I go forward?'

"He is a wonderful person. And a wonderful chef. I asked him if he had been to a cooking school. 'No,' he said. 'I just watched my mother.' I think he misses his family deeply."

Sagar talks to his mother, father, sister and brother in Iran. But he says he can't think much about them for now. Nor can he envisage marriage and children. He says he just wants to get on his feet and to get justice.

Refugee journeys do not end neatly. Sagar is in Sweden but his head is in Nauru and, by extension, Australia, a place he may never see.

On his wall is a surrealist-style picture that came with the flat. It shows the back of a man standing in a desert with a suitcase. The man stares into a huge picture frame, inside which is a pretty yellow apartment block, or perhaps a palace. He is so close to the new life he can almost touch it. But he cannot walk in.

* 1976

Born in Najaf, Iraq.

* 1991

Injured after the Shiite uprising against Saddam Hussein when an unexploded grenade detonates near his home.

* MAY 1997

Flees Iraq for Iran with parents and siblings.

* MAY 2001

Leaves Iran alone.

* OCTOBER 7-10

Rescued at sea during the "children overboard" episode.

* OCTOBER 21

Sent to Manus Island with other asylum seekers.

* JUNE 2002

Receives first negative decision on application for refugee status.

* SEPTEMBER 2002

Transferred from Manus to Nauru.

* NOVEMBER 2004-APRIL 2005 Interviewed by ASIO officers after it was found he had a genuine claim that he would be persecuted if returned to Iraq.

* AUGUST 2005

Told by Immigration Department he has been assessed by ASIO to be a risk to Australia's national security and is not owed protection.

* AUGUST 2006

Becomes the last of the 2001 boat arrivals to be left on Nauru when his friend Mohammad Faisal is evacuated to Brisbane because he is suicidal.

* DECEMBER 2006

Sweden gives him refugee status.

* FEBRUARY 2007

Flies to Sweden.

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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