A refugee's journey: The story behind the face

In this week’s Global Talk podcast we talk to Zaid Khalid Mahmood, a 26-year-old from the Iraqi city of Mosul who was recently featured on the controversial Hot Migrants Instagram account. The account, which has since been deleted from Instagram, posted photos of young, male refugees it deemed handsome, taken as they made their way from war-zones to western Europe. But these photos revealed little about the people featured, what they had endured on their journeys to Europe and the lives they left behind. Zaid, whose city was captured by ISIL in June 2014, is now living in a refugee camp in Belgium. He shared his story with The National.

UPDATE: A day after this podcast was published Zaid received the news that he had been granted asylum by Belgium. This means he is now officially recognised as a refugee and can remain in the country on a permanent basis.

Our story on the Hot Migrants account: http://bit.ly/1pnk54N

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