A 14-year-old boy and an around 20-year-old man went on game together with 13 other people from Afghanistan. Around ten of them were minors. The group started walking from the abandon factory Grafosrem in Sid late in the evening on April 19, 2019. Their plan was to reach a taxi.

After three days, on April 22 at 8 pm, they state that they recognized a drone flying behind them. At that point, they were in a forest close to the highway A3, an around two to three hour walk from ‘parking number three’, Rastovica rest station.

10 minutes later, a group of eight Croatian officers arrived. One of them was described as a civilian officer, wearing a blue T-Shirt showing a ‘small face’ while the rest were dressed in dark blue uniforms, three of them had batons with them.

They asked everyone to sit down in one line and to put all their personal belongings, e.g. their phones, money, food, energy drinks in front of them.

The officers then took the belongings of the individuals, piece by piece, and threw them into the forest. In some cases, they only took the batteries out of the phones.

When they arrived at the 20-year-old respondent, they saw that his phone was in his pocket. They asked him to hand it over, which he did, and took out the battery. Then, they also wanted him to hand over his Monster energy drink. But when he gave his drink to the officer, a drop spilled on the officer’s uniform. Immediately, the officers began to beat him with batons and kick him.

Then, they also beat other individuals: the respondent states they used batons and an electric taser.

“It was a lot of fight, black stick, electronic stick, everybody sticks.”

The 20-year-old respondent states that everyone was silent.

“All people no speak. Speak? Fight!”

Finally, they put the whole group in a Croatian police van and brought them to the Batrovci border crossing. The driver was driving very harsh and some individuals got sick.

“Driver this side, this side.”

When they arrived back in Sid, it was around midnight.