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The police hit me with a stick and almost pushed my little sister into the water
The main respondent is a 25-year-old man from Palestine. He reports that on Sunday 24th of March 2024, he was apprehended with 5 other people at the Croatian village of Strašnik (Petrinj) and was pushed back to Bosnia at Grdanovac (Kostajnica city). The group was composed of Palestinians nationals, 3 men between 25 and 33 years old, 1 woman and 2 children of 9 and 12 years old. The group left Bihac at 5 a.m. on Saturday 23rd of March and walked 35 hours, taking one short break to sleep in the middle of the mountains. After crossing the border they walked 25 kilometres into Croatian territory. When they reached Strašnik village, 4 police officers with vehicles stopped them at around 4 p.m. of Sunday 24th March. The respondent described the policemen as wearing blue uniforms, which he identified from image galleries as being the uniform of the Croatian Border Police. 3 more police officers joined later, wearing the same uniforms. The respondent described the two police vehicles as big white Ford vans, without windows on the back, and with blue stripes on the side. This matches the description of the Ford Transit 2014s used by the Croatian border police.
The group explicitly stated their intention to seek asylum in Croatia, which the officers did not acknowledge, and the officers began to beat them. The respondent stated: “They used to talk about us in a bad way and then he tried to hit us with a stick, for my little sister it was a dangerous place”. The police officers took the phones, bags and some clothes and shoes, which were never returned to the group. The group was then split into two groups and was brought into the vans, which drove for 1 hour and 30 minutes to reach the Bosnian border, at the location of Strašnik (Petrinj). The group was then pushed back on a ferry bridge on the river Una, which marks the border between Croatia and Bosnia. The vans stopped at the bridge, they left the vans, and the officers forced the respondent and the group to cross the bridge. The respondent described the bridge as not stable, with some pieces of iron and wood falling down. The respondent recalls that the police officers hit him with a stick and at least one of the other two men was beaten as well with sticks. The respondent showed photos of the wounds and hematomas that appeared on the back of this other group member as a result of the violence. The police also forced one of the two children to cross the bridge with the stick and the respondent recalls that the child was afraid, crying, and about to fall into the water.
After crossing the bridge, the respondent thinks that the Croatian border police called the Bosnian police to return them into Bosnia, because after the pushback people he identified as the ‘Bosnian police’ came with some vans to collect the group. The officers also collected another group of people who had been pushed back on the same day, and they were all brought to Bihac together. The respondent identified the nationalities of this other group as Syrians, Palestinians, Moroccans, and Tunisians. It was already night time, and the ride took more than an hour and a half before the group were left at a gas station.