This residence permit would never have been issued if the IND had known the truth. The representative of the State Secretary is clear today, but also hard. Fraud has been committed, the license has been revoked. Leila was allowed to come to the Netherlands in 2017 as a 22-year-old because she married an Afghan refugee who has lived here for twenty years and has become a naturalized Dutch citizen.
But in reality he was not her husband, but her father. He is sitting next to her today and will explain how they came to their ‘act of desperation’ together. She is charged heavily for the false application. All circumstances have been taken into account, there are no new facts, the IND tells the court. Leila lived in Iran, the country to which she also traveled back to a few times until 2019, due to inheritance issues. She can therefore go back permanently to ‘pick up her life again’, says the state.
But then the picture flips. In Iran she turns out to be a victim of identity fraud by her Iranian family, with which she is blackmailed in the Netherlands. In Iran she turns out to have been illegally adopted as a baby. She was born there as the daughter of an Afghan refugee who was allowed to work as a housekeeper in an Iranian family. They were willing to take her baby in, provided she left. After which they registered Leila as their own child with the Iranian government under the family name – that is how Leila acquired Iranian nationality. She never knew her Afghan biological mother. In fact, she only learned as a teenager that she is ‘fake’ and has a different last name and different nationality. As a 14-year-old, she was then married off to a 34-year-old Iranian. When he discovered that she was ‘not real’, he returned her to the Iranian family.
In the meantime, her Afghan-Dutch biological father had discovered her existence. How exactly will not be made clear at the hearing, but it is clear that since then there has also been irrefutable DNA evidence. Unaware of his ex’s pregnancy, he fled to the Netherlands 22 years ago. Since discovering his daughter, he has been trying to support her – with money for insulin, for example. Leila has diabetes. But also in the quarrel with her Iranian family that arose after the death of the parents, about the inheritance. If only Leila refused to do so, otherwise a report would be made to the Iranian authorities for her false identity. Her situation in Iran became unsustainable. Her father says she attempted suicide. “I had to save her life.” After her failed marriage, “her (Iranian) brother wanted to sell her.”
In thirty years of immigration law, I have never come across such a bizarre case
Lanny Vleesenbeek lawyer Leila
In any case, Leila herself wanted to be with her real father, in the Netherlands. Where she also turned out to have a Dutch half brother and sister. But how to get there? So then the fatal idea of registering as a ‘partner’ for the residence permit was born, which the IND pricked through in 2019.
In thirty years of immigration law, I have never come across such a bizarre case, says her lawyer. The judge is also in her stomach with it. Iran now has ‘code red’. Foreign Affairs advises travelers to avoid the country, precisely because of the struggle for women’s rights. “Yes, that advice applies to Dutch people,” says the IND representative. But ‘madam’ is an Iranian, isn’t she, who knows her way around? But is that really so? Doesn’t she run the risk of being arrested there as an Afghan illegal with a false Iranian identity, especially now that her story has been documented in the Netherlands? Furthermore, she has now become ‘westernized’, says her lawyer. And she converted to Christianity. “I love Jesus,” Leila says quickly, pleading.
“What leads for a life there did you include in the weighing of interests?” the judge asks the IND. The state attorney says many elements of Leila’s story are “asylum related,” for which there are really different procedures. Whether someone is in danger has no legal place in this assessment, she believes. She does not consider it substantiated that she can no longer function in Iran, while she was able to do so before. In the Netherlands she works in the same restaurant as her father, she as a dessert chef, he as a cook.
Her lawyer scorns that she has no life ‘there’ at all. She is without a family, without a network, she is not allowed to go down the street without a man accompanying her. Relations with the Iranian family have been disrupted. Her position should have been included in the IND decision, says the lawyer. For example, by holding another hearing to test her story.
Ten weeks later the court instructs the IND to make a new decision within six weeks because the decision taken was not carefully and not sufficiently motivated. In addition, the judge notes that it is indeed not certain that Leila has a safety net in Iran – the government’s position is called incorrect and careless, whereby “the current (political) situation in Iran with regard to women” also plays a role. The court finds it incorrect that the IND did not take her ‘adoption’ into account because there would be no evidence for this. That evidence is there in the form of documents. If the IND does not reverse the decision, then it is clear in which direction the court is thinking. Leila’s.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of April 17, 2023.