My field of work is engineering.

Calling ourselves "failed" PhD students does not look motivating. I am a former PhD student who have not completed a PhD. I am happy to join your support group but not necessarily with the goal to pursue a PhD again.

Congratulations Kareem. You made it. It might have been a pain to go through appeal but it is worth. Congratulations

When people are born and raised healthy, in most cases they do not realise how others that born with a disability suffer. This is also the case when postgraduate students from a "developing" country suffer, most EU students have no idea of how they see things.
Born in such country is a huge unseen disability. What are your chances if you want to do postgraduate study and research in "real" institutions? What are your chances to get a decent job utilising your education and skills?
You have to go to the formalities and pay the international tuition fees. One goal for most "international" postgraduate students is to continue living in the country they study at.
Actually they search for new home. They have a target to achieve. They want to get a residence permit then a permanent residence permit then a citizenship to match a "normal" person who was born in the EU, Canada or Australia. I recall a conversation with a PhD student and I asked him if he got the citizenship of the country of the university, he replied unfortunately no. He said citizenship is more important than PhD! I do not agree with him but I would also say getting a EU citizenship is "equivalent" or close to the same achievement of obtaining a PhD.
I do not have any solution or suggestion but I wanted to highlight some troubles that are not usually seen by healthy people.

Hello. There is no golden advice I am afraid. What I recommend is to send to PIs showing interest even in volunteer jobs to put a foot in the lab. Moreover, have you considered the Flemish part of Belgium? Commute from Brussels won't be that far and English is totally accepted there in contrast to the French Belgium.

I know exactly how you feel. A typical HR behaviour. They usually think they have more important things to do. Just call him/her again tomorrow or so and be a bit "pushy". I do not think there is any bad intentions, but only careless behaviour.

This is bullshit. If your university in Europe, you should be firm about your health problem with supervisor and even report his behaviour. About this a**hole RA, be more firm and tell him you have a boss to talk to and it is not his business to decide for you what time to show up at office.
Now the scary part if you are in one the countries where oppression and forced labour are not uncommon, then talk to supervisor and tell him it is not possible to do this and you spend 8 or 9 hours nevertheless at work. Tell him about this bullying RA and get this thing clear and understood that you won't go everyday to work with fear.
Otherwise quitting is still an option. I do not see any good coming from this environment if things stayed the same.

Hi. I am sorry to do that. I would advise you to change the degree as soon as possible to Master by research or taught Master. Otherwise it is more likely you won't get anything and exit with nothing.

I would like to add that my ex supervisor hates the most when someone gives him a paper which requires a lot of proof reading or incomplete figures. He usually said go to peer colleagues and give me the paper in a state that it needs only fine tuning. You are right. The situation is not ideal but it is not that bad. He/she should have reacted better but it is still not very bad.

Ranking matters but not very much. Ranking matters more when you want to go further in academia. If you work in academia, publications are more important than ranking. If you work outside academia, ranking does not play a great role.
Nevertheless I do not agree with those employers who based their choice solely on ranking and publications but it is how it works in most of the academia world.