‘(The border police station) was very dirty, we were not given food or water'

The respondent is a 31-year-old man from Turkey. He was part of a transit group consisting of 3 people, ages between 27 and 42. 2 people were from Turkey, and one man was from Morocco. The transit group were pushed back from Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina around the 19th of June, between midnight and 1 AM. 

The respondent reports that he was pushed back from Croatia to Bosnia-Herzegovina three times within the space of 10 days. He described in detail the third pushback.

Reportedly, the transit group was detected and apprehended close to the Okučani Train Station, near the Gradiška Border Crossing in Croatia. At that moment, the man from Morocco managed to run away when a group of men approached. Two men in plain clothes arrived in what the respondent described to be a typical civilian vehicle. The respondent identified them as police, as one of the officers took their badge from a pocket near their chest and showed it.

During this incident, the police stole the respondent's documents, including his ID, driver's licence, and passport, as well as his money and his power bank. They also confiscated his phone, but this was later returned. He detailed that the police searched his phone, looking for any photos and videos of the border, or any sensitive information about migration routes that they presumably don't want shared. According to the respondent's experience, if the authorities had found any of this information, they would have broken the phone. The respondent said that no physical violence was used during the interaction. 

After being stopped and searched by the Croatian police, the two men were taken to a border police station, presumably it could be the closest one, Gradiška Police Station (45°08'33.1"N 17°15'41.0"E), which is not far from the apprehension location around the Okučani Train Station. 

The respondent described the vehicle that took them to the facility as a closed minibus, with no air conditioning in the back and no lights. He didn't specify when the vehicle arrived at the spot, nor the number of officers in it.  Searching for a photo on the internet, he pulled up the two photos below to show the internal and external appearance of the van. The model of the van is presumed to be a 2024 white Citroen Jumper, which the respondent said was marked with police lettering. 

The two men were detained in the police station for one night, but reportedly were not informed as to why they were being held there. The respondent said that he was spoken to in Croatian and was not given access to a translator. He explained that one man there could speak English and tried to talk to the officers, but they refused to converse with him. 

When asked about facilities in the detention centre, he said that there was a toilet which they had access to, but it was in very bad condition. They were not given any food or water for their entire detention period. Sheets and pillows for the beds were not provided.

‘It was very dirty, we were not given food or water, we were left in the same place with 2 Turks and 8 Afghans.’ 

The respondent had no biometrics taken and was not made to sign any documents. He did not experience any violence in the border police station. 

The next morning, at 07:00, the two men were released, and the respondent's phone was returned to him, but he said that the police kept all of his documents, including his passport.

They were then driven three hours back to the border with Bosnia-Herzegovina in an unspecified spot. 

The respondents described the car as ‘closed’ and ‘stuffy’, and they were accompanied by four officers. He said that, like with the other two previous pushbacks he experienced, the transit group had supposedly been left in a site in the forest where armed groups operate, in his words, they were ‘left in the jungle with the Afghan mafia’. 

The respondent contextualized this episode as the third of three pushbacks within a ten-day period.  Describing the first two pushbacks, the respondent reports that his group was taken to a river by the authorities once apprehended. He described how the water was shallow so they could wade across; however, it was raining heavily, and it was freezing.

‘When they left me at the first border, I had to swim across 3 streams in the middle of the night, and it was cold.’ 

The group was not beaten, but explained that:

‘If we do not progress where they left us, they beat those who do not progress.’ 

On each of those three apprehensions, he requested asylum in Croatia, as he explained:

‘Every time I got caught, I told the police to take me to the camp and take fingerprints, but they didn’t.’

According to the respondent, the authorities wouldn’t have explained the reason why his asylum requests were not acted upon. Commenting on the episode:

‘My thought is that they let you cross the border easily, they don’t catch you right away, they wait for you to get tired and lose your strength, and when they bring you back again, they wait for the tired enemy so that you don’t try.’