6 | PROTECTING STATELESS PERSONS FROM ARBITRARY DETENTION IN BULGARIA Mr T. was tortured in his country of origin and was deprived of his Afghan nationality. He was granted refugee status in Bulgaria and has lived in the country over the last 16 years. Mr. T. has a stable 13-year family relationship with a Bulgarian citizen. In May 2015 he was issued an order for expulsion from Bulgaria on national security grounds, because of his alleged involvement in human smuggling. Since then he has been detained. Mr. T. suffers from chronic bronchial asthma and uses an inhalator twice a day. He also suffers from high blood pressure, heart problems and sleep epilepsy. A medical expert report appointed by the Court concluded that “the sanitary conditions in which the person is currently accommodated are incompatible with his health – there is a real risk of worsening of his diseases, and in the near future this might lead to respiratory and cardiac failure”.1 Nevertheless, Mr. T. continues to be in detention, and has been for about sixteen months as of September 2016. Mr S. is a rejected asylum seeker in Bulgaria. His parents were Iraqi nationals. He was born in an Iraqi prison, because his father was “against the regime of Saddam Hussain”. Therefore, the whole family - his father, his pregnant mother and his sister - were imprisoned for eight months. His father was separated from the rest of the family and they never saw him again. Mr. S. was born in the sixth month of his mother’s imprisonment. “They did not release us from prison, but expelled us to Iran”. Mr. S. was forty days old when his family was expelled to Iran in 1982. According to Iranian legislation, his mother could not pass her citizenship to him; only his father could do that. “We do not have proof that your father was Iranian, therefore we cannot grant you any documents”, the Iranian authorities told him when he grew up. His sister subsequently married an Iranian man and obtained Iranian citizenship through marriage. However, Mr. S. remained stateless and did not even have the right to marry the woman whom he loved in Iran. Mr. S. arrived in Bulgaria in 2011, where he approached the Iraqi embassy and was issued an official document stating that he is not a citizen of Iraq. Currently Mr. S. is employed illegally in Bulgaria. “My biggest fear is to be arrested and sent to prison, because I do not have documents”, he told us.