http://www.dn.se/Pages/Article.aspx?id=1019949&epslanguage=sv
ATHLETICS
Bahta may not be Swedish
Updated today 13:52. Published today 13:31
Meraf Bahta was rejected by the Migration Board on his application to become a Swedish citizen. Although she passed the World Cup qualifier time of 1.500 meters to the World Championships in Moscow there will be no start for Hälle-runner.
For four and a half years ago jumped Meraf Bahta of when she competed with a squad athletes from Eritrea in Europe. She wanted to escape military service in Eritrea, and came to Sweden where she has lived since.
She competes for IF Hälle Ljungskile and has steadily improved his times. When she was a few weeks ago in Belgium ran the 1,500 meters at 4.05,11 she went under the qualifying threshold to get running VM. She was asked by his old country Eritrea that run them, but declined.
The practice is that citizenship is given when the person has lived five years in Sweden, which limit Bahta is just months away. Swedish Athletic Association has just last week sent a letter to the Swedish Migration Board to speed up the decision on citizenship, so that she could run for the World Cup for Sweden.
At GP race in Karlstad on Tuesday won Meraf 1500 and enthusiastically told about how much fun she thought it would be to have run for Sweden.
Now she wait for his debut blue and yellow, then the Migration Board rejected her application for citizenship. The basis for the decision is declared to be secret.
Sven Gustavsson
sven.gustavsson _at_ dn.se
(Softwarwe translation)
Received on Thu Jul 25 2013 - 11:42:35 EDT