A woman in Amersfoort has started an online petition in protest at the planned deportation of a five-year-old boy with Down’s syndrome to Iraq, the AD said on Monday.

The boy, his brother and mother face deportation to Iraq ‘at any moment’, the paper said, after the mother failed to win refugee status in the Netherlands.

The child, nicknamed Zuzu, was born in Syria but has Iraqi nationality, like his mother. His father is Palestinian and lives with his sister in Syria. Zuzu, his mother and brother are to be deported to Baghdad, even though the Dutch foreign ministry advises against travel to the city, the paper quoted Deborah Ligtenberg as saying.

The IND have decided to deport the family, who are Sunni Muslims, because they cannot prove that they are at risk in Iraq, Ligtenberg said.

She is particularly concerned about the impact of deportation on Zuzu, who has the mental age of a two-year-old and had been learning to talk with the help of special classes in Amersfoort. That has now stopped pending the deportation.

Down’s specialist Michel Weijerman told the paper that Zuzu’s position in Iraq will be ‘hopeless’.

‘He will live in a refugee camp, where his weak health will not be able to deal with the poor hygiene. In Iraq, he will go downhill physically, mentally and developmentally,’ Weijerman told the AD.