ERBIL, Kurdistan - A Kurdish man from northeast Syria (Rojava) has been named a hero in Austria after he stepped in to prevent two men from assaulting a woman in the capital, Vienna. He was attacked in the incident and is now partially blind.
Diljar Adnan Said, 29, is from Rojava’s Derik town. He has been living in Austria for six years and four months. In an interview with Rudaw’s Dilbixwin Dara on Thursday, he described the incident.
Around midnight on May 24, he was walking with a friend along, Donaukanal, a canal in Vienna. “I heard a woman calling for help. She was terrified. She was being raped and I could not accept this,” he said.
He went up to the men - he saw only two of them - and told them that the woman was his sister. They handed the woman over to him and he took her to her house. Said told the attackers that he would not call the police.
“We left them but they followed us, taking down my friend so that he could not help me. And when I turned around they hit my eye with a glass,” he recounted. He was knocked unconscious and does not know what happened next, but he has been told that the men tried to throw him into water, but “God saved me.”
Police took him to hospital where he underwent three surgeries and remained there for 10 days.
The incident was reported by several Austrian media outlets, describing him as a hero.
Said has lost 80 percent of the sight in his left eye after being hit with a vodka bottle. “I am in good condition. I am done with all surgeries… Doctors have told me that it will take a long time for me to regain the sight,” he told Rudaw.
When he was in hospital, he was not insured and could not pay the 9,499 euros in hospital fees for his treatment and the government has not helped him. He said his Austrian friends sought his approval to fundraise on the Internet. He initially refused their offer, fearing that his mother in Syria would see his photographs, but when he could not come up with the money, he approved the fundraising campaign on gofundme.com.
The campaign, launched on August 17, has surpassed its goal of 9,000 euros. Said told Rudaw that he will pay the hospital fees with the money and dedicate the rest for treatment for the woman, who has not been named.
No one has been arrested in connection with the attack, according to Said. He said a friend of the woman had recorded a video two hours before the incident, intending to post it on their social media accounts. The men who later attacked her are seen in the footage, which has been handed over to the police.
The Kurdish hero said neither he nor the Viennese woman knew the attackers previously.
Said praised the treatment he received from the hospital staff, saying they respected him for his brave act. His friend, who is from Syria’s capital city of Damascus, was not harmed in the incident “because their target was me,” the hero said.
