Editor’s note: From time to time we publish a guest column. This one is from our reader ‘pungentpeppers’ who has been indispensable in finding us some incredible stories to post.
http://www.dagbladet.no/2013/06/13/nyheter/innenriks/drap/bortforing/27696856/
Immigration Law Designed to Protect Children Backfires
A murder case in Norway reveals an Afghan man married a much younger, underage wife, and intended to use her for immigration benefits. When she and their child were granted temporary residency (as unaccompanied minors), but she failed to file for her husband who was living illegally in Norway, the husband killed her. Norwegian prosecutors cite the husband’s motive for murder as “jealousy”.
The victim’s name is Fahezeh Ahmadi. The husband has not been identified. Fahezeh was only 14 when she was married off to her 26-year-old cousin in Afghanistan. A year later she gave birth to a baby daughter. After a time, the family left Afghanistan and headed to Norway, arriving in March 2013. Once in Norway, the teenager sought asylum with her daughter. She filed on the basis that she she was “unaccompanied” having become separated from her husband while traveling.
As a minor apparently alone in Norway with a child, she was granted temporary residence and was living in an asylum center on Norway’s south coast.
However, Fahezeh was not alone – her husband was in Norway, illegally, and may have been staying with Fahezeh’s sister!
In June 2013, Fahezeh applied for leave from the asylum center to visit her sister living in Grua, a small town some distance away. While she was taking a shower at her sister’s home, Fahezeh’s husband stabbed her three times, killing her. The husband then fled, snatching their two-year-old daughter.
After a search spanning several countries, Fehezeh’s husband was arrested in Italy, and both he and the child were returned to Norway. The husband admitted to killing his wife. Last week, the now 29-year-old was sentenced to 16 years in prison for the murder that the court believed was pre-meditated. The killer plans to appeal.
Norwegian society’s best intentions were expressed by laws guaranteeing immigration rights to children. However, those laws killed Fahezeh. Fahezeh met her fate because she failed to deliver the goods that were expected by her husband – goods that he believed were his right under Norwegian law – legal residency for himself as the spouse of a woman who applied for asylum while still a minor.
Our world has too many unscrupulous, predatory and manipulative adults. Sometimes it is the parents who send their children off “alone” – often to a dangerous and uncertain fate – with the expectation that they will obtain residency and then produce immigration papers for the rest of the family. Other times, the culprits are the husbands of vulnerable young girls – as in Fahezeh’s tragic Norwegian saga.
“Exactly what the powers of hell feed on: the best instincts in man.” – author Philip K. Dick
Note to foreign readers: The “Dream Act” is a proposed law that would grant residency rights and ultimately citizenship to children who are illegally present in the U.S. When Congress didn’t pass the bill, President Obama, with the stroke of a pen, created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program which gives illegal alien minors the right to stay and work in the US (and go to college at taxpayer expense!). The US is also experiencing an explosion in ‘unaccompanied minors’ arrivals (like Fahezeh in Norway) who come under the care of contractors hired by the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
For further reading about this tragic case:
http://www.newsinenglish.no/2014/02/07/afghan-murder-defendant-sentenced/
http://www.newsinenglish.no/2014/01/14/man-finally-admits-to-killing-his-wife/
http://www.newsinenglish.no/2013/06/16/murder-suspect-arrested-in-rome/