ISTANBUL — Fadi Mansour wanted to go to Europe, but he was afraid of the sea. Even at the beginning of last year, months before arrival numbers on Greece’s islands surged, deaths were frequent; it was March and the water was icy cold.

So instead, Mansour decided to follow a smuggler’s advice: fly from Istanbul to Malaysia, where Syrians can still enter without a visa, and try to get on a flight to Europe from there. He wasn't sure if it would work, but thought it worth a chance. A year later, he wishes he could turn back time.

“I wish I had drowned in the sea. It would have been better than this,” he said in an interview. Malaysia accused him of carrying a false passport and turned him back, but Turkey didn’t let him back into the country, detaining him for unknown reasons. Since then — March 15th, 2015 — Mansour has been living in Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport.

It is lunch time, please come and share my one-year daily dish pic.twitter.com/jO5rV7knhx — Fadi Mansour (@Fadimans0ur) March 16, 2016

It might sound like The Terminal in real life but there’s no Hollywood glamour in Mansour’s day-to-day life. He is detained in the airport’s “problematic passengers room”; on some days, he is allowed to walk up and down a secluded corridor for an hour.

The room has no natural light and no beds, so Mansour sleeps either on chairs or on the floor. He is given fast food three times a day. On his anniversary in the airport, he tweeted a picture of a Burger King meal, captioning it his “one-year dish.”

Amnesty International, which drew attention to Mansour's case this week, said a lengthy detention in such conditions “may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

The detention appears to be arbitrary, contravening Turkish and international law, said Anna Shea, a migration researcher with Amnesty who works on Mansour's case. “For the detention not to be arbitrary, they would have to inform him of the reasons for his arrest. We are not aware why he is being held,” she added.

Mansour denies travelling on a false passport and thinks he has been detained for trying to reach Europe. The United Nations Refugee Agency has hired a lawyer for him, he says, but they have not heard back from the Turkish courts.

“I don't know what to do anymore,” he told Mashable in a phone call. “I read more than 40 books. I tried to learn languages. I play on my phone. A month ago, I mentally couldn't handle it any longer. I became almost aggressive, feeling like I want to hit the walls. I started smoking two and a half packs a day. I've never smoked before.”













Fadi Mansour holds up a sign that says, "A person’s search for a safe life is not a crime. To hold a person prisoner for one year in an airport is seen as a crime of cruelty."





Image: provided by Fadi Mansour



















Mansour in the Atatürk Airport in Istanbul, Turkey.





Image: provided by Fadi Mansour









Mansour, a 28-year-old from Damascus, was studying law when the Arab Spring swept across the region. In 2012, after the uprising had turned into a civil war, he was called up to join the army. Mansour fled to Lebanon. Two years later, he moved to Turkey after he was briefly kidnapped by a local gang, he said. But even returning to Lebanon seemed a better option than to stay in the airport.

“Once, in November, another person they detained in the same room attacked me so badly I had to go to hospital. After that, I asked to go to Lebanon,” said Mansour.

Lebanon, too, returned him to Atatürk Airport, where Turkish police arrested him once again. It was only then he told his parents about his situation. Before, he had told them he was doing fine and living in Istanbul.

“The police treat me horribly, always mocking me,” he said. “They say, this is not your country, this is our country, why don't you go back to your country? They say don’t expect to be released, you will be sent back to Malaysia or your country.”

Mansour is terrified of the thought of returning to Syria. Amnesty International warns that doing so would contravene the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits the return of refugees to a place where the person is at risk of human rights violations.

“Arguably, pressuring a refugee to return — by making the choice indefinite detention versus returning to Syria — also amounts to refoulement,” said Shea, Amnesty’s researcher.

Mansour is not the only refugee detained in a Turkish airport. Another Syrian, known as M.K., has been stuck in Istanbul's Sabiha Gökcen airport since November last year.

The one-year anniversary of Mansour’s detention comes during a week in which Ankara and the European Union finalized a deal that will see refugees landing on Greek shores returned to Turkey. Confronted with the largest refugee crisis since the second world war, the EU has been desperately searching for a solution to stem the flow of refugees across the Aegean sea.

Under the deal agreed today, the EU will resettle Syrian refugees from Turkey in return for Ankara taking back all migrants who cross to Greece after March 20th. Turkey will also receive financial aid, talks on visa-free travel and progress in its EU accession negotiations.

The deal has been roundly criticized by rights organizations and the United Nations. The UN Refuge Agency voiced concerns about the legality of the plan, saying that the “collective expulsion of foreigners” was illegal under the European Human Rights Convention.

Nor are the UN and other groups convinced that Turkey, which currently hosts 2.5 million Syrians, is a safe country for refugees. Although Ankara has signed the Geneva Convention on refugees, the rules are only considered valid for refugees fleeing European countries, thus giving fewer rights to Syrians, Iraqis and others.

Amnesty International called Europe’s plan to designate Turkey a safe haven “alarmingly shortsighted and inhumane”, noting that it had documented the forcible return of several refugees to Syria.

Mansour says he had applied for asylum in Turkey multiple times to no avail. Instead, he says, Turkish police offered to return him to Syria.

“They told me, we have two million of you already and don’t need any more,” he said. “I used to think Turkey stood side-by-side with Syrians. Now I’m watching on TV here people say how Turkey is helping Syrians but to me, it's all lies.”

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