We met the respondent in a forest near a Serbian city, where he is currently sleeping as he cannot walk after being subjected to severe beatings by Romanian police officers.

On the night of the 27th of August, the respondent was trying to cross the Serbian-Romanian border. It was a group of seven men from Afghanistan who are between 14 and 19 years old. On Saturday morning at 1 am, some men, described as police officers found the group near the Romanian border. When group members saw the officers approaching them, they all tried to run in different directions but the police caught them and asked whether they were from Afghanistan. When they answered: ”yes we are from Afghanistan”, the officers told the respondent and the other arrested people to remove their clothing and started to beat them with sticks.

”They also took their electric tasers and used it to shock us with electricity.”

After, the respondent describes that the officers walked them back to the border with Serbia. Their clothes and belongings which they had ceased beforehand were not given back.

“They took our clothing, shoes, and our phone and didn’t give anything back.”

In total there were four officers wearing what the respondent describes as police uniforms and two people in civil clothing. The respondent suspects that he heard two of the police officers speaking in another language to each other, he thinks that it was probably German. Those were the ones who beat one of the respondents’ friends. The others he assumes spoke Romanian and reportedly, they were also beating one of his friends.

After they crossed back into Serbia at around 3 am, they arrived in a small border village where a local woman saw the group and gave them some money. “She helped us to survive. She gave us money to go back to Belgrade.”