Sans-papiers

[Al-khiyal]

Abdelouahab Belhocine

May 23, 2007 -- Abdelouahab Belhocine is a 48-year-old man who lives in Constantine (eastern Algeria). He has never had an identity card nor did he ever have any official document to prove that he exists in life. A reporter from Echorouk met him and talked to him.

Abdelouahab Belhocine has spent his life moving from one prison to another and from one country to another country.

When he decided to get married he could not obtain a marriage certificate because “he does not have any document to prove that he is a human being allowed to travel and get married,” he says.

He has been told that he was born on January 13th, 1959, in a hospital in Constantine. He has also been told that when he was two years old he was taken to the house of a woman called Yamina. He stayed with her until she died. Since he was 18 he has spent most of his life in prisons.

He has illegally travelled to Libya six times and to Tunisia four times. In Libya and Tunisia, he was a thief. Later, he was kicked out and came back to Algeria where he was involved in robberies. He made a suicide attempt in Constantine. “I was deprived of my father, mother and brothers and my current situation deprives me of a wife and children”, he told Echorouk.

“I am not like the other people, I don’t want a house or a job, nor did I want a passport. I just want a birth certificate and an identity card”, he added.

An Algerian travels abroad several times with neither passport nor identity card

[Bent_Bladi]

how nightmarish.......

imagine - for people like him... if you die you die alone

[Cheba_Mami]

that's really painful. People should help him try to find a document in the hospital (sigh.... it must be very very hard and he might have already tried hard)