The group of thirteen started the journey from Bihać on the evening of April 17th, waiting for the night to fall to start their walk. At around 10:00 pm they crossed the Croatian/Bosnian border and continued through a forest for one entire night until reaching Mihaljevac.
It was there that, on the the morning of April 19th, at around 9:00 am, approximately eight Croatian authorities approached the group with weapons drawn, demanding to see their documents.
‘We cross the village and police is looking everywhere, when we after go in the forest we were crossing the main road and police comes saying ‘kill you, kill you, kill you’ pointing guns.’
The group stopped and said they did not have any documents. The officers then asked for their money, phones and power-banks, threatening to beat them if they refused. The group-members said that they obeyed because it was not their their first time in this situation and they understood that the threats are real.
‘Sometimes they take money, but mostly beat’
The officers then took the money and destroyed the phones and powerbanks with their feet, throwing them inside the river after.
‘He broke all phone and he put in the canal’.
The group was after put in two police vans and brought to the Bosnian border near Šturlić. Some of the men asked for their money back, but the officers refused to return it. The migrants walked almost during an entire day the 26km distance of the way back to Velika Kladuša.