The respondent, a young man from Syria was pushed back from Hungary to Serbia with a fellow Syrian national.

The respondent explained that he and his friend tried to cross the bridge in Komárom, a city on the Danube river which connects Hungary and Slovakia. He further explained that at the corner of the bridge is a police station and he and his friend were spotted by officers when trying to cross and began to run away.

He explained he was spotted at the bridge by the police and so started to run away. As they chased after him in the dark he wanted to run into an abandoned building to hide. He recalled falling into a fence as he was running which resulted in three very deep cuts on his face which were bleeding heavily. He said after waiting some minutes, he and his friend tried to cross the bridge again.

According to the respondent, when they attempted to cross the second time they were apprehended by the police who stopped them, forcing them to the ground and holding them down by sitting on them.

The respondent recalled that they were taken to a jail that the police reportedly said was solely for Syrians. The respondent said he repeatedly asked for access to a doctor or an ambulance due to the wound on his face but the police consistently refused. He and his friend also repeatedly asked to seek asylum in Hungary, for a translator, for access to a legal organisation and access to any human rights charity. The respondent said their requests were ignored and refused and that this back-and-forth with the police went on for approximately five hours.

According to the respondent, they were being detained with approximately 25 other Syrians in what they described as an ‘unofficial’ police cell or detention space. The coordinates of this location are 47.601265, 18.389438 which shows some kind of car park with a large concrete structure near Tabanya, west of Budapest.

The respondent described this detention site as very dirty, with insects all over the blankets, no soap, one toilet and a sink with dirty water which they were told to drink from. He said they were kept here for an estimated 14 hours. They were given one biscuit, a small pot of jam each and some canned meat to eat during this time. At this site, were reportedly 10 Hungarian officers and one dog. The respondent recalled that the officers were laughing about the injuries that would be inflicted on them if they released the dog.

The respondent was finally taken to the hospital at 12 PM the next day on October 7th, after an ambulance came and made clear he needed to be admitted. At the hospital, the respondent explained that he was given an injection to prevent infection but the wounds were not cleaned nor stitched. He was immediately taken back to the detention space by the police.

After 14 hours spent in detention, they were reportedly placed on a police bus which drove to another site south of Budapest, where a Syrian family with three children were picked up. The respondent described the bus as having four cameras inside, plain wooden and metal benches and metal netted windows. All nine of them were driven to the Hungarian/Serbian border fence near Subotica.

According to the respondent, photos and videos were taken of each person as they came off the bus and they were then escorted to the gate in the fence and forced to walk through to Serbia at Tompa/Kelebija. This occurred at 5.27 PM on the 7th October – the exact time of the photograph of the fence as they were pushed back to Serbia, 17 hours after they had been arrested by the police.