The respondent is a 29-year-old man from Morocco. On the 3rd of July at around 10 pm, he crossed the Evros/Meriç river. He was swimming and pulling a boat with six other people in it, three Moroccans and three Algerians, among them one woman. It was his fifth attempt to make it to Greece after four previous pushbacks.
Once they reached Greece territory the group of seven proceeded walking for several days. On the seventh day, the group encountered three official vehicles. There were two black cars and one white vehicle, one of them was driven by a woman. The respondent related that some officers with black uniforms and balaclavas got out of the car and ran after the group who tried to escape. He explains that the officers fired shots at the ground around the group. But as the officers were still far away, the transit group hid in a small river nearby and then crossed the stream, and thus managed to escape.
The respondent and the other six proceeded on their way inland, walking at night and sleeping during the day in a mountainous area. Approximately 15 kilometres before Komotini in a forested area, shortly before sunrise, the group was sleeping when they were reportedly woken up by kicks and beatings. Six officers had arrived in three white unmarked vans. The respondent remembers that the officers were wearing black jackets and green camouflage pants as well as balaclavas and black boots.
The respondent describes that the officers were shouting “police” and fired tear gas on the group. One of the cans reportedly hit the respondent on his chest. He said that it felt like he was suffocating both from the impact and the gas itself. Then, the group was reportedly ordered to lie down on the ground and the officers fixed their arms behind their backs with zip ties.
One of the officers, a tall, broad man with a walkie-talkie on his shoulder, asked the respondent where he was from. The respondent said “Libya” as he believed they would treat him better than if he told the truth, but the officer started beating him with a baton while shouting “Moroccan”. At some point, the respondent said he could not take the beating anymore and tried to get up, but the other officer reportedly shot another can of tear gas at him, this time on his face.
The officers then searched the group and took all their belongings from them (phones, watches, money, and their bags with all their supplies). A male officer also searched the woman. She was crying while he was reportedly touching her body, harassing her, as the respondent relates. After around 30min on the ground, the group was loaded into one of the vans. The vehicle drove for around one and a half hours on an unpaved road.
At approximately 9 am, the car arrived at a detention site. It was surrounded by a fence and, according to the respondent, looked like “a garage covered with metal, similar to an old farm, with a red roof”. There were no other buildings close by.
There were at least 20 officers present at the detention site, all wearing black uniforms, most of them with a Greek flag on their left arm and a yellow logo on their left chest. The respondent also described that two officers however were not carrying the Greek flag on their black uniforms but had blue armbands on their shoulders.
“They told me ‘you are a terrorist’ and hit me every now and then. I told them I do not want to stay in Greece, I want to go to Europe, and they beat me more.”
The officers were speaking English to each other. The respondent recalled in particular that one of the officers kept saying “this man is crazy”. The officers with blue armbands beat the respondent and the other group members, as did the Greek officers, with batons as well as wooden sticks. The respondent added that they also stepped on their faces while humiliating and searching them.
Subsequently, the officers removed the zip ties and ordered the group to undress. A female officer searched the woman. After around one hour of beatings, humiliations, and frisks, the officers handed back the t-shirts and shorts before taking the group into a small cell, approximately 3 meters by 2 meters in size. The respondent described the room as dirty and nasty with a toilet which was not much more than a hole in the ground in the corner. There were other cells next to this one but the respondent does not know if there were other people or not.
The group was reportedly kept in this detention site for two days. Throughout this time, no other people were brought into their cell. During the two days, the group never received any food, water, or medical care.
At around 11 am on the 13th of July, six officers in green camouflage uniforms with a Greek flag and a logo on their arms, without balaclavas, entered the detention site and ordered the group to get out and into a sage green military truck.
The officers slapped the group members to make them move faster. After a short drive of around 15 minutes, the vehicle stopped at a spot near the Evros/Meric River where a road is very close to the river. He added that there were no trees around.
At the river, there was no boat which the group could have taken back. The officers instead used firearms to threaten the group and ordered them to cross the river by wading through the water. The respondent describes that the water level reached up to his neck.
The woman, who was much shorter than him and could not stand on the ground anymore, kept clinging on to the respondent as the current was strong. This was also why he could only move very slowly. In order to make the group speed up, the Greek officers reportedly fired some shots into the water around the respondent which apparently alerted Turkish border guards who also reportedly responded with fire. The respondent describes that fire was exchanged between the two sides close to the group crossing.
Once they reached the Turkish shore, the group encountered 10 Turkish officers described as ‘soldiers’ in camouflage uniforms who told them which direction to walk to. They walked for around 2km and reached a road where they encountered a man with a car who took them to Ipsala. The drive lasted around 30min.