Abdullah was 19 years old and living with his parents in the disputed West Darfur region of Sudan when he was abducted by armed militia while on his way to tend the family’s flock of sheep on the edge of town. “They held me at gunpoint along with 15 other people, then they killed one of us,” he said.
A young and panicked Abdullah, caught in the crossfire of ethnic conflict, managed to escape his assailants that evening and immediately fled Sudan. He would never return to his home town nor see his parents again. It was the start of a harrowing three-year journey that took him to Libya, Malta, Italy, France and finally the UK, where he claimed asylum. He had no money and endured forced labour in Libya, imprisonment and a refugee camp in Malta and starvation in Italy, he said, and by the time he got to the UK in 2021, he was in a very bad way.
