Syrian refugee tripped by scribe ‘sad but hopeful’
Osama Mohsen waits it out for his wife and daughter to join him from Turkey
More than a year after arriving in Spain, the Syrian refugee who made headlines when a Hungarian journalist tripped him up as he fled police is still waiting for his wife and daughter to join him from Turkey.
His poor Spanish has meant Osama Al Abed Al Mohsen, who was a first division football coach in Syria, has been suspended from his job with a football school. And he is now considering leaving Spain.
Camerawoman Petra Laszlo sparked global outrage after television footage in September 2015 showed her tripping up a man — later identified as Al Mohsen — sprinting with a child in his arms, and kicking another running child near the Hungarian border with Serbia.
A Hungarian court last week sentenced her to three years’ probation for disorderly conduct.
Al Mohsen declined to discuss the incident in an interview with AFP except to say he has “forgotten” Laszlo, who said she has been subjected to a “hate campaign” since the footage emerged.
“I need to look out for the future of me and my family, I don’t have time to think about this journalist,” he said in halting Spanish in the living room of his two-bedroom flat in Getafe, a city on the outskirts of Madrid. “I feel sad, but hopeful,” the bearded and greyhaired 52-year-old said.
“I have three of my sons with me but the youngest needs his mother,” said Al Mohsen in reference to nine-year-old Zeid, whom he was carrying when he was tripped.
He arrived in Spain later that month with Zeid and his 17-year-old son Mohammad. His oldest son Al Mohannad, 19, joined him at the end of 2016.
But his wife and 15-yearold daughter remain in Turkey, where the family fled in 2012 to escape Syria’s civil war.