An Iraqi woman from Basrah, writing under the pseudonym Queen Amidala, said she flew from Basrah to Amman, Jordan on a business training trip last month. Upon her arrival at Queen Alia Airport, she was interrogated for three hours before being denied entry and forced to spend two nights at a custody center near the arrivals lobby before she could catch a return flight back to Iraq. The two-room wing is notoriously known among Iraqis as "the prison."
We were kept in custody for two nights. We've heard and seen a lot of strange stories of Iraqis being held at the airport:- A student returning from Qatar. - A judge acting as a team leader for lawyers who arrived from Dubai to attend a conference in Amman. - A woman and her son accompanying her sick mother. - The Dean of the law college in Al-Najaf, who was to attend a conference in Amman.
We heard many other stories from Iraqis who arrived to Amman from all corners of the world. All were denied entrance to Amman for unknown reasons.
Iraqi blogger Omar recently posted his experience at the airport's "prison." He was on his way to pick up his student visa from the U.S. embassy in Amman (the U.S. embassy in Baghdad does not issue visas). Omar, too, was denied entry, despite having a compelling reason to enter Jordan:
Three hours later, I had been interrogated three times, shown every paper I had a couple times and got yelled at twice.Finally I was taken to the other hall - “the prison”. At that point, I didn’t know what it was, and thought it was just another waiting stop. But the Iraqi guys who arrived before me briefed me on the situation. “Put your hand luggage over there in that room and quickly find yourself a blanket before they are all taken. You’re staying here for a long time brother!” one of the Iraqis said.
I was shocked by what I saw inside; a small passage with two rooms on the side and a third at the end; many Iraqis were chatting or lying on the floor with their bags littering the rooms. There were also some noisy children running around and sometimes crying. One room was designated as “women’s” room, another was for the men, the third was pretty much for children.
An hour passed before I could absorb what happened to me; locked up in a crowded room and just been denied the rare opportunity I had been working on for a year, for no other crime than being Iraqi.
"The current situation needs to be amended," Jordanian journalist and blogger Natasha Tynes wrote on her website. "If Jordan is overwhelmed handling the number of Iraqi visitors to the Kingdom then the international community needs to step in immediately to help Jordan establish a more efficient and humane manner of handing the influx."
Jordan and Syria have recently appealed to the international community to come forward and help lift the burden off the two countries - both hosting an estimated two million Iraqi refugees. Jordan has largely restricted the entry of Iraqis, even those with valid reasons, to the country. Iraqis have slightly better chances to enter Syria at the present and to stay on a three-month permit until they find a third country to host them or go back.
One Iraqi passenger managed to provide a glimpse of the miserable conditions at the Amman Airport's detention center. He amazingly bypassed stringent Jordanian security measures at the airport and posted the following cell phone video on YouTube for the world:
