The respondent is an Afghan man in his 20s. He was part of a transit group made up of 15 people between the ages of 18 and 30, all from Afghanistan. The group were apprehended between Mrežnica and Gornji Poloj (Croatia) on the 1st of November 2024, and were violently pushed back into Bosnia thereafter.

Having walked for approximately 2 days from Sarajevo, the transit group were in the ‘jungle’ close to Mrežnica, Croatia (at the approximate coordinates 45.258799, 15.434747), when they were apprehended by 6 officers. The respondent described the officers as ‘commandos’, army personnel in army uniforms, using a large vehicle identified by the respondent as a Russian Kamaz. ‘When we asked them where they were from, they told us they were Russian’, the respondent explained. Other than the officers claiming they were Russian there is no other evidence on this. He recalled that these commandos ‘allowed us to eat our bread, and treated us with no violence’, though he added that he did not really understand why there were Russian officers in Croatia in the first place.

Following their apprehension, the transit group were kept in the ‘jungle’ for approximately one hour, whilst the ‘commandos’ contacted 4 other ‘commandos’ to come: 1 female and 3 male. The respondent reported that these 4 ‘commandos’ searched them, collecting their phones and power-banks. The transit group were then driven by these ‘commandos’ for approximately 2 hours to a Croatian town/city that the respondent could not identify. There, they were handed over to 3 Croatian border officers in dark blue uniforms. The respondent reported that the ‘commandos’ also gave the group’s phones and power-banks to these officers. The Croatian border officers proceeded to force the transit group into another vehicle, a large white van with police written on it in Croatian.

The respondent reported that the officers kicked and punched the transit group as they entered the vehicle: ‘They hit our faces and backs. Anywhere they could. It was here that my glasses broke, when they tried to hit me in the face. My glasses are incredibly important to me, because I can’t see without them’. The respondent recalled that they were then driven for approximately 3-4 hours to the river bordering Bosnia. The exact location of the pushback is unknown, most likey because the respodnent and other members of the transit group didn’t have access to their phones. ‘At the border, the officers got us out of the van, and hit us with batons. They treated us with a lot of aggression. They hit each of us with their batons 2 or 3 times. They then forced us to walk across the river into Bosnia’, the respondent explained. The respondent also noted that, despite multiple pleas from members of the transit group, the 3 Croatian border officers did not return their phones and power banks, ‘even though the commandos had told them to give us back our phones’.

Describing how the transit group were forced by the officers into the river, the respondent reported that ‘the Croatian officers in blue were the most violent. They treated us with the worst aggression. I was the first person forced out of the van and toward the river. I was scared to get in, because I didn’t know how deep it would be, whether the water would be taller than me or not; but the officers kicked me in, throwing me into the river by force. They did the same to some of the others as well. Like me, they were scared to get into the river, so the officers kicked them in.’

The respondent recalled that at some point after they had been pushed back into Bosnia, an IOM van found the transit group and drove them for approximately 4 hours to Lipa TRC. From there, most, but not all, of the transit group were able to walk back to Sarajevo. ‘3 of my friends were badly injured by the police violence, so they had to stay in Lipa camp’, the respondent explained: ‘[t]hey were in bad condition, so they were unable to walk back to Sarajevo with us’.