British doctor flees Sudan with mum but now faces agonising wait for her UK visa
A UK doctor is pleading for the government to allow his 65-year-old mother into the country after they fled violent clashes in Sudan.
Mustafa Al Hassan, 40, from Southampton and his Sudanese mum Amna desperately crossed the Argeen border into Cairo, Egypt, following an arduous 24 hour wait with no food in the desert.
But now the NHS cardiologist says he was told by the British consulate that his mum needs to apply for a visa to get into the UK, which could take a minimum of three weeks if approved.
After dedicating his life to helping others, Mustafa says he feels that the UK government has “abandoned” him but that he cannot leave his mother behind with no one to support her.
Last night, with thousands of UK citizens still thought to be in the country, Sudan's armed forces accepted a 72-hour extension to the ceasefire brokered by the US and Saudi Arabia.
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The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces also agreed to the new truce.
Mustafa said: "They say there's a ceasefire but there isn't. Even in the cease-fire you are still hearing missiles, you're hearing people firing randomly.
"Where I was, one street was smelling like dead bodies... We've seen burnt vehicles still on the street.
"And you see the destroyed buildings. We were at an army checkpoint and one of the officers told of one building, with many people dying inside and dogs coming in to eat the bodies as they had been there a long time."
Mustafa Al Hassan is an NHS cardiologistWith his mum still in the country, he is desperate to get her out. The doctor said: “I can't just leave her here. There's no one to support her. She's got no friends. I wouldn't be comfortable leaving her.”
Amna had been living with Mustafa’s brother before the conflict broke out.
But Mustafa claims that his brother was denied entry across the border in Egypt due to visa restrictions still allegedly in place for boys and men between the ages of 15-50.
Mustafa said: “I wouldn't be in this situation if he had crossed. I would have time to go back [to the UK] and try and sort things out for my mum and my brother, but I'm in the situation now.
“Even now, [my mum] is still crying about my brother and she doesn't want to leave without him. But he’s safe at the moment.”
Mustafa was visiting his family only to be woken by missiles and gunfire which saw their 16-year-old neighbour shot.
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Mustafa feels "abandoned" by the UK governmentThe father-of-three said: “I was actually in bed. We heard the cannon fire and the missiles and guns and I woke up quite startled.
“We went downstairs at our home and we stayed in the lower floors to try and avoid, stray bullets or stray missiles, which were hitting all the houses around us.
“One of our neighbour's daughters was out just in a garden and died from a stray bullet.
“She was studying for exams and her dad found her in bed and asked her why she wasn't studying and she said, ‘I think I got shot.’
“She just died on the way to finding a hospital.”
Mustafa says that his family fled for the border as the situation worsened, while the advice from the UK government was to stay put.
He said: “We made a group of trapped NHS doctors that contacted our MPs and contacted the government and we never got any help. Once it became too dangerous we all decided to make our own ways out.
People are fleeing the crisis in Sudan (Marwan Ali/AP/REX/Shutterstock)“Some people got called after they'd left by the Foreign Office and got asked to come back to Khartoum so they could be evacuated.
“I'm not sure if that's some sort of media stunt after they've left us there for so long with no help whatsoever. All the advice we got from them was staying indoors.”
The father-of-three and his family had to share the $25,000 (£20,000) cost for the bus with others trying to escape - each paying $500.
On the way to Argeen, he says they saw bodies on the ground and were stopped by militia who seemed to be searching the buses to find someone.
But once they got to the border, Mustafa claims that the Egyptian staff did not treat the situation with urgency and as a result, they were forced to wait 24 hours before crossing.
He said: “We hadn’t eaten in over 24 hours. People were collapsing. My own mother had someone vomiting all over her.
“[My mum] had some musculoskeletal problems which she struggled with on the trip. We tried to take the pressure off of her as much as we could.
“There were no toilets. So we just had to go in the middle of the desert.
“Some people would sleep on the ground where there were people who were renting out these makeshift beds which we gave to the elderly to sort of rest their heads on."
Now, although Mustafa has made it to safety, he says he still feels “abandoned” by the UK government who want his traumatised mother to wait in Egypt while she applies for a visa.
Mustafa said: “I feel like I've been completely abandoned by the UK Government. I've spent half my life working for the NHS.
“I’m a highly specialised consultant who wakes up in the middle of the night to go and do life saving procedures.
“A couple of weeks ago, I was in the hospital from midnight until 9am doing operations and I went in during the day to do my clinics for patients that have been waiting six months.
“I've got patients that depend on me. They've already lost a week of care that they can get from me and that's cancelled operations they've been waiting months.
“My clinic waiting times are six months. They've been cancelled.
“Once I get back. I don't even have time to recover from this emotionally.
“I just need to get straight back to work because everyday I lose my it's time lost from my patients."
Mustafa says the treatment he received in Sudan by the UK Foreign Office three weeks ago was much different to when the Ukraine war broke out.
He said: “It's incredibly frustrating and I just feel like you know that the UK government has no appetite to help.
“They've been quite swift in helping Ukrainians and it's glaringly obvious. I just feel like someone from Ukraine is more important than me. I really can't understand.
“It's difficult not to think that it's because we're Black and African.
“It's not like I'm asking the UK government to support my mother financially. All I'm asking is access for her to come and stay with me in the UK.
“I'll pay for the tickets for myself and my mother to come back to the UK. That's all I'm asking for, really just access so I can get her in.”
Meanwhile, the UK ambassador to Sudan Giles Lever has been relocated to the British Embassy in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa and will "lead the UK's diplomatic efforts in the region to bring fighting to an end in Sudan," the Foreign Office said.
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