Abu Yousif is back home, back to Baghdad, where his brother was murdered and where, he believes, the same fate awaits him in the hands of the vengeful killers.
Every day is spent living in fear that the gunmen will hunt him down. “They have not gone away from here. I am afraid of what could happen. I only sleep a little, and then I wake up and think, is this going to be my last day, wondering what is going to happen to my family,” he says. “This is still a very dangerous place. People in England must realise that.”
Mr Yousif, a 39-year-old engineer, was one of 40 Iraqis thrown out of Britain, where they had sought asylum, because the Home Office decided that their homeland was now a safe place to live. It was the first time that a return to Baghdad had been attempted since the start of the Iraq war in 2003.
–Agencies