MADRID—The Syrian refugee who was tripped at a border hotspot by a Hungarian journalist in an incident that generated global outrage arrived in Madrid early Thursday with hopes of rebuilding his career and giving his family a new life.
Osama Abdul Mohsen stepped out of a train just a few minutes past midnight (2200 GMT) after a trip of more than 20 hours from Germany to Spain, then quickly began thanking everyone for giving him the opportunity for a fresh start.
“Thank you all,” Mohsen said, slowly, in broken English. “This is very, very important for my life. Thank you very much.”
His 7-year-old son, Zaid, looked tired but still had the strength to open a broad smile and declare his love for soccer and his greatest idol: “Cristiano Ronaldo.”
Mohsen was captured on video carrying Zaid when camerawoman Petra Laszlo tripped him and sent him tumbling to the ground in a field full of other migrants running from authorities near the Hungarian village of Roszke.
“Now I feel that I am (flying) in the sky,” he told the several dozen journalists who waited for him as he arrived from Barcelona with Zaid and another son. “I am very happy.”
After the incident in Hungary, Mohsen ended up in Germany, where media reports revealed he had been a soccer coach in Syria. That prompted a Spanish soccer academy to offer to rebuild his life. The CENAFE school in the suburb off Getafe helped bring Mohsen to Spain and will give him a job and a place to live near its training facility.
“Hopefully this will serve as an example to the rest of Europe,” said school president Miguel Galan. “We need to help these people.”
