The refugee beaten and conscripted into Putin's war machine

A year ago, the Somali journalist Ilyas Ahmad Elmi set out for Europe. He had been repeatedly threatened by jihadi extremists at home, and hoped to make it to Germany, where he planned to seek asylum and be with his eight-year-old son. "I left because I wanted to see my son, who I've never met... and because I had received threats," said Elmi.

- Shaun Walker WARSAW and Faisal Ali

Elmi flew to Russia and then travelled overland to Belarus, from where he aimed to cross into Poland, often considered a safer route to Europe than the Mediterranean. But instead Elmi suffered months of hardship. He recounts being beaten up by border guards, forced to spend weeks living in a forest and watching a young Somali woman in his group die from lack of medical attention.

Elmi thought his decade-long history of journalistic work and the threats he had received at home would be sufficient to make a claim for asylum. In 2010, he was forced to flee his home town in Beledweyne region when it was taken over by the jihadist group al-Shabaab.

In 2015, there was an al-Shabaab raid on the town where Elmi lived, his former wife Muna said. "I was pregnant and feared for my child," she said.

"I saw some people leaving the town and left with them... I didn't think my husband survived the attack." She lived in Nairobi, before travelling to Norway and then Germany, where she and her son received refugee status.