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I wanted my phone and my medicaments back because of my brain cyst but the police smashed my phone and kept the medicines

Date & Time 2023-04-09
Location Maljevac area
Reported by No Name Kitchen
Coordinates 45.196029856641, 15.800396247185
Pushback from Croatia
Pushback to Bosnia
Taken to a police station no
Minors involved no
WLTI* involved yes
Men involved yes
Age 20 - 34
Group size 2
Countries of origin Morocco, Algeria
Treatment at police station or other place of detention
Overall number of policemen and policewomen involved 6
Violence used beating (with batons/hands/other), pushing people to the ground, gunshots, destruction of personal belongings, theft of personal belongings, sexual harassment
Police involved 6 croatian border police officers wearing dark blue uniforms; 1 police car

In the night between the 9th and the 10th of April a 20 year old woman from Algeria and a 34 year old man from Morocco were walking in a forest in Croatia around Velika Kladuša area. It was around 2am when they were apprehended by four individuals that they describe as wearing dark blue uniforms (description that could likely match the uniforms usually worn by Croatian border police officers).

After seeing the respondents, the four officers reportedly called their colleagues (two other officers) that arrived soon on the spot with a car. Right after, the respondents recall being loaded in the vehicle and driven for 15 minutes to a second place in the woods, that they could not locate, where they stopped for 10 more minutes. There, they report that a male officer body-searched the woman respondent, while harassing her with sentences like: “You’re sexy girl” and, as she reports, when the officer found her phone, her medicines and the money she was hiding in her underwear he started to beat her with a weapon she described as a baton.

Afterwards, the respondents state that the officers took away their clothes, leaving them in the cold night wearing only their t-shirt and pants. Right after that, the young woman states that she asked the officers to have her phone back and because she kept there some important medical documents, results of ultrasounds and prescriptions concerning a brain cyst she found out to have some months before. As an answer to this request, the authorities smashed her phone and started beating her again with the same batons, but this time they hit her particularly on her head.

Reportedly, the officers then pushed the respondents away screaming “Go back to Bosnia!” and so they started walking. After waiting for some minutes in the woods, the respondents heard the car turning on and driving away, and decided to go back to the location where the violence happened to check if the woman’s phone was still there. When they arrived, they found an officer still there waiting for them, and he shot the gun in the air screaming again “Go back to Bosnia!”. Eventually, after two hours walking in the woods, without the possibility to find their way around, they finally got to Velika Kladuša.