A Kurdish family protested in central Berlin Tuesday at the deportation to Turkey of a 51-year-old woman to a city she does not know in a country whose language she does not speak, according to dpa. Khadra Oumairat, mother of seven and grandmother of three, fled the Lebanese Civil War to come to Berlin with her Lebanese husband in 1980, more than 27 years ago. The Oumairat family described how some 10 to 15 armed police burst into their home in the Schoeneberg borough of Berlin at 8 am on Wednesday last week. The officers handcuffed all those present and hauled Khadra off to the airport to put her on a flight to Istanbul. After wandering the airport there in despair with virtually no money, she finally found refuge with a friend of the family in the city. The dozen-strong group of family members and friends, with a baby in a pram, held up makeshift placards in front of the Berlin City Hall on Alexanderplatz. "Deportation has torn our family apart," and "We demand our mother back," was scrawled on them. "She has three grandchildren here in Berlin," her son Ismael, 27, said in fluent, although heavily accented, German as intermittent drizzle fell over the central Berlin square. Khadra had four children when she arrived and gave birth to a further three in Berlin. She herself was born in Beirut in 1957 to Kurdish parents who had fled Turkey during World War II, according to the family. Khadra's father then abandoned the family to return to Turkey and take another wife. But he subsequently registered the children from his first marriage with the Turkish authorities as having been born in Turkey. According to these documents, Khadra was born in 1954 and is thus 54, not 51. The family claims that all the children were registered as having been born - improbably - on the same day, although in different years. Berlin Interior Ministry spokeswoman Nicola Rothermel said she would not comment on individual cases, but that the information available to the authorities was "different." "Her identity has been cleared up, and the deportation has taken place in full compliance with the law," Rothermel told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. Khadra Oumairat had failed repeatedly to comply with conditions set out for her to meet, and the case had been running for years, Rothermel said. A special application as a "hardship case" - the last possible avenue open to her - had been lodged as long ago as 2004, Rothermel said. Ismael insisted that his mother had been seeking Lebanese citizenship and had presented documents to the authorities proving this just a week before she was deported. He described dramatic scenes when the police burst into the Schoeneberg flat where the family lived. "My sister tried to jump out of the window before the police seized her," he said. "They were all armed. They thought we were going to resist them." Reinhard Klich, the lawyer acting for the family, described the police action as "really brazen." He expressed outrage at the way armed officers had stormed the flat, locking the men present - husband Yousseff and two sons - in a room. "It's unbelievable," Klich said, pledging to pursue the case on civil rights grounds. Diana, Khadra's 21-year-old daughter, denied reports that the family were all recipients of social welfare, insisting that she was studying and that at least one brother had a job. And she expressed anger that the family had not been able to say goodbye to their mother. "She had no money. She should not have been deported to Turkey. They should rather have sent her to Lebanon," she said. The family believe the background to the case lies in attempts by the Berlin authorities to rid the city of Kurdish criminal gangs that have gained a fearsome reputation in Germany and other European countries. "But she is an innocent housewife and grandmother. They can't put everyone in the same basket," Diana said.
