...that movie with Tom Hanks about a stateless person stuck in JFK?
What if it were not merely fiction, but real?
What if it were not JFK, but Moscow’s Sheremetyevo for almost half a year?
What if instead of friendly airport workers helping out, one was dodging foreign intelligence agents....with your kids?
And fearing deportation back to Iran where death was a distinct possibility?
Too crazy to be a movie?
Too bad it's real life:
Pajamas Media presented exclusive video smuggled out of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport of Iranian dissident Zahra Kamalfar and her two children who had then been trapped in the airport’s transit area - forced to drink and bathe from the toilets - ... Kamalfar had escaped Iran with her family during a prison furlough and was fighting extradition back to the Islamic Republic while seeking political asylum in other countries.
Incredible as it may seem - despite efforts by the United Nations Refugee Committee, the European Human Rights Court and lawyers and activists worldwide - Kamalfar and her family are still trapped in the same airport transit area...months later.
Russian authorities have not given them the normal housing usually offered those awaiting asylum judgments and, according to Pajamas Media sources, are making life even more uncomfortable than it was for the political refugees, who have been finding it more difficult than before to obtain simple survival tools like blankets.
Hengameh Afshar - talk show hostess for satellite station Tasvir Iran - who has spoken directly with Kamalfar - told Pajamas Media Russian authorities have evidently directed airport personnel to ignore the family and not even to speak with them.
Read the rest of the report from January
HERE
Now the good news:
The long ordeal of Zahra Kamalfar and her family in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport - often discussed on this site - is finally over...Kamalfar will not be returned to Iran, as Russian authorities were threatening to do, but will receive refugee status in Canada.
...Canada finally issued the refugee status to Zahra and her children and that they will be leaving Moscow on Wednesday, March 14 with final destination, Vancouver on March 15 to resettle there.
LINK
Here's wishing them good luck, good flights and God speed to their new home...
...and if any of our FT family should see her en-route between Moscow & Vancouver, please be good to them... Most of us know the horrors of an extended transit, but half-a-year of hell in a Russian airport is more karma than even the most frequent of our frequent flyers is apt to garner in a lifetime of flying.