The respondent is a 24-year-old man from Syria. He was apprehended on the 21st of October together with 8 people, all males from Syria, 24, 25, and 27 years old. After they had been walking for 5-6h inside Romania, they got stopped by Romanian authorities at 2pm. Two Romanian police officers approached them in a black car with black uniforms. The authorities asked them where they were headed, to which, they answered they were going to Hungary. The respondent does not remember any symbols on them, but he remembers that they were carrying a gun and a baton, and also that one of the officers was bold. The respondent asked if they were Frontex, to which, they replied “no”, that they were Romanian police.
“I asked the police: Are you Frontex or something? They tell me no, we are not Frontex, we are normal police, Romanian police.”
The two officers ordered the group to sit down. They stayed like that for 20 minutes until another police black car arrived. The new car arrived with 2 other Romanian policemen. When the car appeared, they were all sitting on the ground. They ordered them to stand up and put on their masks, before forcing them to stand up in front of a car that was around. The respondent asked the authorities again if they were part of Frontex, to which, they did not even answer, using violence instead. He explained that the police were beating the whole group. But they only took his telephone. The two officers started beating the group members individually in front of the car by kicking and beating them with batons between 2-5 times. They got all beaten on all parts of their body, but especially on the knees and elbows. The respondent was strongly beaten on his left elbow, provoking him a hard pain.
After 10-15 minutes of beating by the police officers, they had to wait for 20 minutes until other authorities arrived at the place. A black van of the Romanian police reached them with two policemen inside. They were wearing black uniforms. The group members were forced to enter in that van one by one and in 25-30 minutes they reached the Serbian border.
They stopped the van in Beba Veche (Romania), near Majdan (Serbia), on a road in the middle of the fields. They gave the phone back to the respondent and ordered them to walk, while shouting “go back to Serbia and don´t come back to Romania”.
None of the group members asked for asylum at any moment.
The days after, the damaged elbow swelled and hurt a lot. So, that the respondent thought it was broken. The doctor determined it was not broken but that the beating had been so hard, so he would need medicine to heal it.
