‘At some point during the night my cousin collapsed and died shortly after (...) No one helped me’

On the 3rd of July, a group of 15 Afghan men, including minors, crossed on foot into Bulgaria from Turkey in Strandzha National Park, Bulgaria-Turkey border near Malko Tarnovo area. The respondent described that they were pushed back about two days before, as we report in this testimony in our website.  After an unknown amount of time, they arrived in a village near Burgas city.

“Two days later (the first attempt), we tried again. We managed to cross into Bulgaria. We had to run a lot. We reached a village not far from Burgas”

The respondent described extremely high temperatures during their journey across Bulgaria, which affected their health. During the night, his cousin became unwell and fainted. The respondent sought help, but his cousin died shortly afterwards. 

“I was with my cousin from Afghanistan, the same cousin who had crossed with me during the previous attempt. It was very hot. At some point during the night, my cousin collapsed and died shortly after. We were by the roadside. I told the rest of the group to keep going, and I stayed behind with his body. I tried to stop cars to ask for help. One car finally stopped, and the man inside asked me for my watch. Then he drove away. No one helped me. The police arrived a few hours later. An ambulance came around 7 a.m.”

The respondent didn’t specify the number of police officers arriving at the spot, but he recalled an ambulance reaching the place only in the early morning. Right after the authorities reached the spot, they apprehended him and drove him to Burgas to a facility he identified as a police station. He described the treatment there: 

“I was arrested and I spent 36 hours at the police station in Burgas. They gave me only some water and one biscuit. I was very hungry. They took my fingerprints”

The respondent explained that he was then transferred to what he defined as a detention centre close to the border with Turkey, where he remained for what he counted as 15 days. This could be the Lyubimets Detention Centre. In the meantime, he was informed that he would have to cover the expenses to repatriate his cousin's corpse to his country of origin.

“My cousin’s body was taken to the morgue in Burgas. They asked for €4,000 to send his remains back to Afghanistan” 

The respondent felt traumatised after this experience and commented telling the reasons he left the country and shared his feelings about it: 

“I can't believe the Bulgarian police treated us like this. They are crazy. I fought against the Taliban in my country alongside NATO forces. This is why I cannot stay there. We don't want to leave our families, our houses, our cars, everything we have, to come here. We come because there is a big problem in Afghanistan. I worked with British soldiers, with the French, and with the Polish armies. There were also Bulgarian soldiers. These are the same people who now treat us like this. They came to our country, we worked with them”