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“Go back to your country” yelled the drunk police officer
The main respondent is a 26-year-old man from Morocco. According to the respondent, he was travelling with 3 other men who were also from Morocco and around his age. The respondent reports that, on November 12th, the group took a taxi from Lipa Camp to Bihac, and from Bihac the group took a car to Velika Kladusa, where they started moving by foot. The respondent recalls walking 15 km to get to the border of Croatia. According to him, they arrived at a small village in Bosnia called Gradina, which is where they crossed into Croatia. This happened at around 9-10 a.m. They spent the first night within the forest, according to the respondent. The respondent reports that on the second day of their transit, in the evening, they walked through a neighbourhood. He describes that the neighbourhood had many houses that had “ring cameras”, or the doorbells that had a camera attached to them. According to him, he believed that these cameras were used to watch and report people on the move back to police officers. According to the respondent, they continued on the road, at this point it was around 12 a.m.-1 a.m. on November 14th. He recalls that the group was trying to reach Glina, Croatia, but they were waiting for the 4 a.m. bus. The group was, at this point, around 3 km outside of Glina. According to the respondent, they continued on the street for about 500 metres, when they noticed a vehicle. The respondent describes the vehicle as a normal civilian car. The respondent reports that he did not notice the car was running. When the group walked past it, the respondent recalls, the individuals got out of the vehicle and stopped them. According to him, the two individuals were wearing civilian clothes, but they had their police badge and gun on the holster. “You could tell that they were police by the way they were talking”, the respondent recalls.
The respondent reports that the two individuals were drunk and laughing at them. The respondent states that he did not think they should run away from them, as he believed that they were going to be sent to the camp in Zagreb. According to him, the officers then started to take the telephones from the members of the transit group, and started to search and check their bodies. The respondent recalls that one of the phones was taken, one of the phones was broken by one of the individuals, and another was returned back to the owner. The respondent reports that the two individuals started asking him “Euro, Euro, money”, requesting the men to give the money he had. This altercation happened at the entrance or border into Glina, Croatia. After about 10 minutes, according to the respondent, a police van arrived where the members of the transit group and the two individuals in civilians clothes were located. The respondent reports that the vehicle was a marked Croatian police van and inside the van there were three people, two men and one woman, wearing uniforms whose description matched with those worn by the Croatian Police officers. The respondent recalls the police officers placing the members of the transit group inside the van, and closing the door behind them, at this point it was around 3 a.m. in the morning of the 14th of November. According to the respondent, the police officers shouted at them, “Go, go back. There is no room. Croatia doesn’t want you. We don’t like you. Go back to the place you came from” The respondent continues by saying “the thing with Croatia, is that when they say these words, they speak not only for Croatia but for what all of Europe wants”. According to the respondent, the officers hit one of the people he was with. As the respondent recounts, that individual was not understanding what the Croatian police were telling him, so the police officer slapped him. They drove until 3:30 a.m. to the border between Bosnia and Croatia. The respondent recalls being dropped at the border crossing.
overview
4 people ,
from Morocco,
aged 26 years old.