Taida Pasić

Taida Pasić (born 10 April 1987 in Priština, Kosovo), is a Kosovar woman who became famous as a result of the circumstances arising from her application for temporary stay in the Netherlands.

Pasić was born in Kosovo, formally a part of Serbia but controlled by the United Nations. Her family fled Kosovo in 1999 to the Netherlands, where she spent the remainder of her childhood and became fluent in Dutch. Her family's applications for refugee status were rejected, until in 2005 her family accepted a one-time payment to be resettled in Kosovo. She returned to the Netherlands in January 2006 on a French tourist visa, intending to complete her final months of high school. [cite news
url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4938568.stm
title=Dutch judge rejects refugee bid
publisher=BBC News
date=24 April 2006
accessdate=2008-02-17]

Pasić was arrested by immigration police in March 2006, and the ensuing political controversy about her alien detention and the actions taken by Dutch integration minister Rita Verdonk became a major issue in Dutch politics, leading indirectly to the resignation and temporary loss of citizenship of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet. In her memoir, "Infidel", Hirsi Ali claims to have privately urged Pasic's case and to have told Verdonk that she herself had lied on her asylum application - something that Verdonk denies. ["Infidel, 2007"]

On 28 April 2006, Pasić left the Netherlands for Bosnia, and took her exams in the Dutch embassy in Sarajevo. Since August 2006, she has been a student at the University of Leiden.

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