Refugee aid charity highlights continued long asylum decision delays

A top lawyer with a Czech organisation for helping refugees has contrasted the fast-track treatment given to a Cuban political prisoner and other asylum seekers in the Czech Republic. Eva Holá, a lawyer with the non-profit charity the Organisation for Aid to Refugees, said many refugees who had suffered imprisonment and torture from countries such as Syria, the Congo, and Iran had to wait for a year for their asylum applications to be processed. In one case one applicant from Iraq is still waiting after three years. Cuban political dissident Rolando Jiminez Posada was given immediate asylum and greeted by the Minister of Interior Radek John when he arrived with his family in Prague this week. OAR’s Holá said the long waits for an asylum decision continued in spite of applications falling by a third between 2007 and 2009.