The Khmoyan family was not deported to Armenia on Saturday after all. “The flight has been cancelled,” the family’s lawyer Bruno Soenen announced on Friday evening. He didn’t reveal why the flight had been cancelled.
The family, two parents and two children aged eight and two, arrived in Belgium in 2009. An asylum request they submitted was refused and the family went into hiding after a failed deportation attempt in 2014.
The family was found in Borgerhout (Antwerp) on the 8th of January and they were taken to the 127bis detention centre at Steenokkerzeel.
A child psychiatrist diagnosed “early signs of an identity crisis and narcissism, plus signs of insecurity” in the oldest daughter Anna-Maria. These problems will get worse and worse as the family spends more time in detention.
On Thursday, their lawyer was told they would be deported on Saturday. Mr Soenen said that news put the young girl under yet more stress.
Now that the flight has been cancelled, the family will be moved to an open centre on Monday.
The Brussels Times
