6 | PROTECTING STATELESS PERSONS FROM ARBITRARY DETENTION IN MALTA IBRAHIM SUZO’S STORY Ibrahim was born in Sierra Leone and grew up with his grandparents in the countryside, where his grandfather hunted for bush meat. In order to offer him more opportunities in life, and to protect him from the dangerous situation in Sierra Leone, his parents decided to send him to is aunt in the Gambia. There he spent a few years living in a refugee camp with his relatives. Despite his several applications to be resettled, he was not chosen. He decided to leave this country of refuge to move northwards, to Europe, where to him everything seemed possible and human rights were respected. After travelling in rough conditions and surviving the crossing of the Mediterranean Sea, Ibrahim arrived in Malta where he was placed in a detention centre. The conditions were simply horrible. One day, a group of detained minors complained about their time in detention and, faced with silence as to their fate, a riot erupted in the centre. The Malta Armed Forces quashed the riot violently, beating, tear-gassing and shooting rubber bullets at the detainees. Ibrahim was one of the detainees who were arrested after this riot and put in prison for an additional 6 months. Criminal proceedings are on-going. He twice met representatives of the Sierra Leonean authorities, with a view to confirming his nationality, and twice they did not recognise him as a national. Ibrahim was eventually released from detention after 24 months, but the Maltese authorities are unable to deport him. He is left in a legal limbo, a failed asylum-seeker and without a nationality