Iranian family gets UN shelter
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) yesterday said it would protect an Iranian family from deportation after the father threatened to set himself alight outside the UNHCR’s offices in Palaio Psychico, northern Athens. The Iranian man, a political dissident who has been in Greece for three years but has yet to have his asylum request processed, resorted to the threat after learning that his wife and daughter, who entered Greece illegally on Sunday, had been sent to Turkey. «We do not know exactly what happened at the border,» said Giorgos Tsarbopoulos, the director of the UNHCR’s Greek office. «But it is our priority to know about the procedures illegal immigrants are subject to at the border, as some are entitled to protection,» he said. The Iranian mother and girl are believed to be at a detention center in Edirne, a town just north of the Turkish border. The UNHCR’s Greek and Turkish offices have agreed to cooperate to prevent the repatriation of the family members, believed to be in danger if they return to Iran.
