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The four men wearing uniforms took sticks and started beating the kneeling men on their hands and heads.

Date & Time 2024-03-18
Location Exact location unknown
Reported by Anonymous
Coordinates 45.001206148479, 15.732001445544
Pushback from Croatia
Pushback to Bosnia
Taken to a police station no
Minors involved no
WLTI* involved no
Men involved yes
Age 20 - 50
Group size 14
Countries of origin Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Morocco
Treatment at police station or other place of detention
Overall number of policemen and policewomen involved 4
Violence used beating (with batons/hands/other), pushing people to the ground, destruction of personal belongings, theft of personal belongings
Police involved 4 policemen with black uniforms 1 white police van with a blue line on the sides

The respondent is a 20 years old man from Syria. He says that after travelling with the transit group for 22 days without water or food, on the 18th of March they were apprehended and pushed back by men in black uniforms.

The transit group consisted of 14 people: 11 Syrians, 1 Iraqi, 1 Palestinian and 1 Moroccan. After walking for days in the woods, the group reached the edge of an asphalt road, called ‘Magistrala 37 Hrvatska’. The exact location of apprehension is unknown, and the map coordinates are approximate.

After a few meters of walking, a car with Croatian number plates and 2 people on board stopped the transit group, and the driver called the police by phone. After a few minutes, a white van with a blue stripe on the sides arrived, from which four people got out. The respondent recognized the people as policemen.

The respondent states that the 4 people were wearing black uniforms and that as soon as they got out of the van they started to be violent with the men in the transit group. The respondent states that he and the rest of the transit group were forced to kneel on the road and put their hands behind their heads. At this point, the four men wearing black uniforms took sticks and started beating the kneeling men on their hands and heads. The respondent states that after several strokes of the stick, the police officers broke his thumb.

When the men described by the respondent as policemen finished clubbing the group, they started checking all the mobile phones. Each man in the transit group was asked to unlock the phone with his fingerprint but the respondent doesn’t know what they were looking for. In addition, after they had finished checking the phones, the uniformed men also started to break the connector of the phones, i.e. the part where the cable is inserted to charge the phone. Finally, all the people in the transit group who had money had to hand it over to the four men in black uniforms.

The respondent states that after these described events, the men in the uniforms got the whole group into the van and drove to the border with Bosnia. Once the van stopped, the group was made to get out and the men in uniform shouted to go back to Bosnia. Unfortunately, the respondent didn’t know the exact location of the pushback.