The 26-year old men had left Algeria four months ago. He stayed in Sid for just eight days before he went on game on April 21, 2019. He left at 10 pm and made it to the Croatian border, clinging on the underside of a train for 30 minutes. He was traveling with around eight more people on the move who all got caught. After the first half an hour under the train, he continued traveling inside for four to five hours until he arrived to a city whose name he doesn’t remember. There, the authorities searched the train and detected him. They took him to a police station and made him fill a document, both in Arabic and English, where he had to write down his name, age and country. They further took photos of him, but no fingerprints.

Afterwards, he was taken back in an unofficial black car to the Serbian border to the Batrovci crossing. When they arrived, three other officers kicked and beat him with a baton for around 10-15 minutes. The whole time, he was trying to cover his face with his arms, since a friend of him who was beaten ended up with bruises all over his face. The officers kept telling him to take down his hands, but he didn’t do it in order to protect himself.

“I felt they wanted to beat my face.”

When they finish beating him, they broke his phone in two pieces and then returned it to him. Then they started shouting:

“Run, no more train!”

Although his injuries were so bad that he couldn’t move, the officers kept telling him to run away.

First, he thought his arm was broken, because he couldn’t move it.

“It was very cold and I want to cover myself with my jacket. But it doesn’t work, because I cannot move my arm.”

When he could finally walk again, he had to return to Sid by foot, which took him five hours. He arrived back there at 12 pm.