It was a different world in Czechoslovakia
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Munir Al Youssef was born on 10 March 1954 in southern Syria. He lived with his family in Al Qrayya, a village of about seven thousand people, twenty kilometres from the larger city of Suwayda. He grew up in a Christian family with his five siblings. In 1973, he began studying at secondary technical school in Damascus, majoring in electrical engineering. In 1977, he received a scholarship to study in Czechoslovakia. He spent the following year on a language course in Jihlava. There he found a girlfriend and later they had a daughter. In 1978-1984 he studied at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Brno University of Technology. After graduation he returned to Syria. He was in regular contact with his girlfriend and daughter, but only in writing. He completed two and a half years of compulsory military service. After returning to civilian life, he started working as an electrical engineer, married a local woman and had two children with her. From 1997 to 2000 he worked as a project manager in Saudi Arabia. After returning to Syria in 2000, he became Division Manager and held this position until 2005. Since mid-2005, he has worked in the United Arab Emirates and later in Qatar in various senior positions in the construction industry. Due to the political situation in Syria, he applied for Subsidiary Protection in the Czech Republic in 2017. After about a year, he received it. In 2025 he was living in Jihlava.
