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Papers given, then taken away during pushback

Date & Time 2022-07-02
Location Near Velika Kladusa, Bosnia
Reported by No Name Kitchen
Coordinates 45.1840797, 15.8068421
Pushback from Croatia, Slovenia
Pushback to Bosnia, Croatia
Taken to a police station yes
Minors involved no
WLTI* involved no
Men involved yes
Age 19 - 24
Group size 2
Countries of origin Pakistan
Treatment at police station or other place of detention detention, photos taken, personal information taken, papers signed, no translator present
Overall number of policemen and policewomen involved
Violence used theft of personal belongings
Police involved Slovenia: 5 or 6 officers at the border crossing; Croatia: unknown number of officers to transport to a facility; 6 or 7 officers at the facility; 2 officers in blue at the pushback (consistent with border police)

On February 7th, two men from Pakistan were pushed back from Slovenia to Croatia and then from Croatia to Bosnia. The respondent was 19 years old and his friend was 24.

The two men had boarded a truck in Croatia; at the border to Slovenia, around 1am, the respondent stated that Slovenian officers inspected the truck and found the two men. The respondent was unsure as to where exactly in the border area they were. The officers asked them where they were going and what they were doing, to which the respondent replied that they were going to Italy. The officers, the respondent claimed, told him “they would give him stay” which he understood to mean he would receive asylum.

He spent one or two hours in what he described as a “container” at what the respondent took to be Slovenian immigration control with five or six officers (no further description was given of this).

After that time, a group of officers wearing blue whom the respondent described as “Croatian officers” arrived in a van and took the two men to a facility in Croatia. He did not know the location of this facility. During their time there, he saw 6 or 7 officers and his friend acted as a translator. The officers there took information from him and gave him what he thought was a “seven-day stay.” The respondent believed that this meant he could move freely in Croatia for seven days and proceed to go to Slovenia. He was given three papers detailing his “stay” in Croatian, English and Pashto.

After receiving the papers, he was held in what he could only describe as a room with his friend. The facility itself had multiple rooms, at least one other of which was occupied (by five women from Nepal who received what the respondent called a “one-month stay”), according to the respondent.

At this facility, the officers took the respondent’s phone and about 15 Euros, which he never got back.

After about one full day in the room, in the evening, when the shift had switched, two officers wearing blue uniforms (consistent with those of the border police) came and took him and his friend from the room. According to the respondent, they got in a van and the officers said, “Tonight I help you, you are deport in Bosnia.” The respondent told them he had been given a seven-day stay and was therefore allowed to remain in Croatia. The officers took his papers and told him to go.

The respondent and his friend were pushed back to Bosnia in the area of Velika Kladusa.