There’s hardly enough furniture in Mohammad’s home for a studio flat, let alone for a four-bedroom house in the west of Denmark. The dated television that the former Iraqi interpreter uses to keep up with events at home is better at producing static than news.

As for the desktop computer mounted on a makeshift dinner table – in front of a faded brown leather couch better suited for outdoor furniture – well, it’s as temperamental as the television.

This is not what Mohammad expected when he was smuggled out of Basra after a string of death threats from al-Qaeda, who had already tortured and killed three of his colleagues.

He fled to Denmark with his family earlier this year under protection from the Danish military, whom he had served for 18 months.

Mohammad, who is 40, expected job opportunities as an English teacher, schooling for his children and, perhaps, a modest home where necessities were a stroll away. Instead he was given a halfway house, granted an 8,000 kroner (£850) monthly government payment and told to sort out the rest of his affairs on his own. “If I had thought life was going to be like this, I would not have come here,” he said in an interview conducted in Arabic. “I would prefer to live in danger in Iraq than to live here.”

Mohammad, a former English teacher who also worked for three months as an interpreter for the British military in Basra in 2004, once wished that he had continued working with them – until he learnt that interpreters relocated to Britain were sent to one of the most deprived areas of Glasgow.

So far, 16 of the 96 interpreters relocated to Denmark since last year have returned home with their wives and children, citing integration difficulties, language barriers, no job or education prospects and, in a few cases, an improved situation in Iraq.

Mohammad is among the 20 per cent of interpreters who want to go home now because of their disappointment with the Danish Government. If they do leave, they won’t go home empty-handed and can return within a year if they feel that their safety is compromised, according to the Danish Refugee Council that advises Iraqi interpreters and their families wanting to return home. Each returning adult in the family is eligible for a one-off payment of £2,900, and each child £930.

Those returning will also have health insurance and access to necessary medical supplies for a year and will get £1,350 for computers or other work-related devices.

Birthe Rønn Hornbech, the Danish Minister for Refugee, Immigration and Integration Affairs, said in a statement: “The Danish Government has done everything to help the interpreters and their families who had worked for the Danish military in Iraq in order to help them create a new life in Denmark.”

But Mohammad feels let down by the system: “If it wasn’t for the interpreters they would not have gotten by. We wanted to work with the coalition forces because we felt they were people who came to help us and save us from the bad and repressive period we had gone through.”

He said that the safety Denmark had offered him and his fellow interpreters was far outweighed by the negative impact that the move has had on him and his family. He said his children were unable to make friends because of the language barriers and learning Danish at a Red Cross refugee centre was making them depressed and lonely. “Safety is only part of life and not life itself,” he says. “And I feel that my family’s life has been ruined. I feel like my family has been robbed of a good life.”

Andreas Kamm, the refugee council’s secretary-general, admits that it is difficult for refugees to integrate in a country that politically “stigmatises” refugees.

“The attitude you’re confronted with in Denmark might not be what you expected when you put your life at stake in Iraq,” he said. “It is rather difficult and it takes time. They should have had more patience, maybe, but it takes time.”

He also criticised the Danish Government’s policy on housing the refugees in areas away from their friends and the main cities.

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