The proper response to cruelty

Osama Abdul Mohsen, the Syrian refugee who was deliberately tripped up while fleeing Hungarian police by Petra Laszlo, a camerawoman working for a right-wing Hungarian television station, has been given a home and will be given a job by Spain’s national training centre for football coaches.

He and his two sons – an 18-year-old and the seven-year-old he was carrying when Laszlo tripped him up – arrived in Spain yesterday, the New York Times reports.

Osama Abdul Mohsen is a professional football coach.

The arrangements were made by the training centre’s president, Miguel Ángel Galán, after he saw footage of the nasty incident which was shown on news media across the world.

The football training centre has used its annual budget for publicity to rent a flat for the family instead, in the Madrid suburb of Getafe.

Mr. Mohsen and his sons travelled to Spain from Hungary by train, accompanied by a journalist from the Spanish national newspaper, El Mundo, and a bilingual (Spanish/Arabic) student from the football training centre, who acted as interpreter.

Spanish television broadcast live coverage of the Mohsens’ arrival in Barcelona, where they changed trains for Madrid. Mr Mohsen gave a video interview to El Mundo in English, saying that he sees a future for his children in Spain.

The training centre says it will now help Mr. Mohsen apply for asylum and get permission to bring his wife and two more children from Turkey – and that as soon as he learns Spanish, he will have a job at the centre.