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Pushed back from the Hospital Bed
The date is not fully known by my interlocutor, but he believes it was around the beginning of November that he started his journey into Croatia. In total the 6 Moroccan men left in the middle of the night to try to cross the border by climbing through the mountain. They spent between 8-10 hours attempting to climb the mountain. In the first two days that they were travelling through the mountains and forest it began to heavily rain, my interlocutor explains he was unprepared for this weather and did not have the clothes or enough food to get him through this time. He explains, “we were all water. we were unable to stop walking, if we stopped our blood would become even colder”. After a journey through the mountain and forest, my interlocutor explains that he arrived in Kolonica. He was waiting for the train that leaves at 6:25 pm to Zagreb, but this train never arrived. After the train time had passed, my interlocutor noticed two suspicious men in civilian clothing in a car that he felt was a police officer but was not certain. After seeing these police officers, he decided to leave and into the forest again, now he was alone, as the other men stayed at the train station and then left on a bus. My interlocutor was left waiting for the next arrival of transport, but for two days he explained he was living in an abandoned building with no food. Now my interlocutor explained that it is the third day in Kolonica, but 5 days since leaving Bosnia. He met a Ukrainian person who was also moving through Croatia, and they agreed to take a taxi together. The taxi driver drove to a point that the two men had paid for, but when my interlocutor asked if he could take them a little farther, the taxi driver called the police. My interlocutor explains that the 3 Croatian police removed them from the car. There were two Croatian police cars. My interlocutor continues, that once he got out of the car, the police officers guided them to a location far from the main road
When the police officers took him off the main road, his stress levels were very high, he started to smoke a lot. He felt his body start to feel pain and shaking, as he describes and his mind was in a stressful state. At this point, my interlocutor says he does not know what happened, he blacked out. He can only assume that the police called an ambulance. Because, as he explained to me, the last thing he remembered was being with the police than his memory turned black and he woke up in the hospital. According to the medical documents that my interlocutor showed me, he was in the hospital for two days, between November 13th to November 15th. It was not the doctors who released him from the hospital, it was the police. As he recounts, the two police officers entered into his hospital bed, and told him to get up and dressed. The police officer took my interlocutor out of the hospital, once they were outside of the hospital building the police officers proceeded to search the interlocutor’s belongings and body. He explains that when the police were searching him they took the money he had and took his phone, and proceeded to take him to the police station.
The police proceeded to turn on the air-conditioner on high for the car ride from the hospital to the police station. When they arrived at the police station, the police officers kept my interlocutor inside the car, with the high air conditioning on for 4 hours, before allowing him to come inside the police station to sit. The police denied him access to any proper food or water as he sat waiting. The only food he was able to get while waiting at the police station was one piece biscuit and half a cup of juice that one police officer gave him. According to this individual, he was sitting in the police station for 5 hours. As the evening apparach, they took these individuals into a closed cell with a bed to sleep in, and locked the door behind them. When the morning arrived, my interlocutor explained, the police gave him a paper to sign. The individual claims that the paper was in Arabic, however, the police did not allow him any time to read the paper, instead demanded an immediate signature, so the individual was uncertain what it was he signed. The police officer told him, “don’t read it, just sign the paper”. After this point, the police took him to the border of Croatia and Bosnia, where Bosnian police detained the individuals and took him back to Lipa Camp.
overview
1 people ,
from Morocco,
aged 40.