The respondent is an Iraqi woman, aged 29, who was traveling together with her blind 49 year-old husband and their two children, a 4 year-old boy and a 2 year-old girl. The family crossed from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia on the night of the 29th November 2023, together with a family of two people from Afghanistan.

Soon after crossing the border with Croatia, the group was reunited with eight young men of undisclosed nationality to the respondent. In the area around Korenica, the group was caught by three individuals that wore a uniform composed by black jackets and black pants, resembling the uniforms of Croatian special police officers. The respondent says they repeatedly claimed they wanted asylum but the individuals in the uniform didn’t even reply. The men in the uniform forced all of the adults to lay face to the ground, pressing with their knees on the people’s back between their shoulders. The men in the black uniform stole all their phones except for one, destroying part of them and taking the others, and they took all their money

They then proceeded to call two more men wearing the same uniform previously described, and those men arrived in a white van in which the group was forced to enter. After a short but scary drive, where the driver drove very fast, they all got pushed back – including the respondent’s blind husband and two children.

They were left in a forest area and had to walk 35 km to go back to Bosnia and Herzegovina.