17

from Croatia to Bosnia,

The main respondent is a 31-year-old man from Syria. He reports that on Wednesday the 1st of May 2024 he was apprehended with 2 other people at the Croatian village of Novska and was pushed back to Bosnia in the area of Velika Kladuša. The group was composed by 3 Syrian nationals, three men of 25, 27 and 31 years old. The group left Borici camp on the 29th of April at around 2 p.m. and reached the bus station of Bihac, where at around 3.30 p.m. they took a bus to Banja Luka. Once arrived there at around 6.30 p.m., they took a taxi and asked to be left at the border. The taxi driver left the group at around 10km from the border, saying that it would be dangerous for him to continue the ride. The group started then to walk and reached after more than 5 hours the river Sava, which marks the border between Bosnia and Croatia. At around 11 p.m. the group saw a drone and lights of police cars on the other side of the river. They then decided to wait until the following morning to cross the river, sleeping on the ground of the forest. At 5 a.m. of the 30th of April the group decided to cross the river with a small inflatable boat. Even though the boat was made for 2 people the respondent said that the crossing was still quite comfortable. Once on the Croatian side of the river the group walked for around 16 hours in the forest. The respondent described this part of the journey as particularly difficult: they came across multiple swamps, marshy terrain, and fording passages. The respondent said he was afraid not only of getting stuck in the water but also of wild animals, since the group passed by multiple snakes and boars. During the first hours of the morning the group ran out of food and water, and one of the three members, driven by thirst, drank from a dirty puddle. After walking in the forest, at around 12 a.m. the group reached a big highway close to the Croatian city of Hrvatska Kostajnica, that the respondent identified as the E70 after looking at the map. Since the group considered too risky to exit the forest and try to cross the road, they decided to take a rest until the sunset at around 5 p.m., in order to be able to walk without being seen during the night time. Since it was too dangerous to cross the highway, the group had to walk down the highway for around 10km to reach an underpass where to cross safely. The group than reached the city of Novska at around 4 a.m. in the morning of the 1st of May 2024. While walking to reach the closest train station, the group divided itself: one men decided to walk on the street while the other two, afraid of being seen, decided to walk on the trail tracks. At this point, at around 6 a.m., at only a couple of hundred meters away from the train station of Novska, the men walking on the street was overtaken by a local police car, with the driver who, after looking in the rear-view mirror, reversed and stopped the whole group. The policemen asked the group to see their documents, but the group couldn’t give any. They were then asked to sit on the ground and to put their phones on the ground as well. According to the respondent, at this point the local policemen called the border police, which came after 10 minutes with a big white van. The respondent described the first vehicle as a small white car with a blue line on the side and police signs, driven by two policemen with greenish uniforms with matching trousers and shirt, and the second van as without windows, with a dark interior with no seats and with fastening for chain and handcuffs on the ground. This van was driven by a policeman and a policewoman, that the respondent described as wearing dark blue uniform with Croatian flag patch on the sleeve and personal names patches on the chest. Once shown the image galleries, the respondent could identify the van as a prisoner transport van of type Fiat Ducato III from Croatian Border Police and the first car as a regular police patrol car. He identified the uniforms as well of the two first policemen as being of Croatian Regular police and the two latter as being Croatian Border police uniforms.
At this moment, the latter Border police officers started talking aggressively towards them, asking questions and insulting them in English. After that, they searched the group. One of the three members asked the police officers for a lighter to smoke a cigarette, but instead of getting an answer, the policeman punched him in the face. The respondent asked for asylum, but one policeman answered: ‘It’s not working, you have to come here by flight and with regular papers’. The respondent than argued that he doesn’t have documents and that his national papers doesn’t allow him to move freely and legally to Croatia. The group was then pushed inside the van and brought to a close police station, which according to the information gathered most probably corresponds to the Border police station of Novska. Still desperately thirsty and without access to food and water for the past 24 hours, once at the police station, the respondent asked for some water. Despite desperate pleas, the group was given only one small bottle. The group had then to stay for seven hours inside the police station with only half-litre of water for all three. At the police station the group was asked again for documents and told that they if they had had documents they would have been fingerprinted and asked to sign a paper to obtain a permission to stay in Croatian territory for 24 hours before being readmitted to Bosnia. At 12 a.m. the group was taken inside the same white van. During this short period of time, in the almost complete darkness of the back of the van, one policeman took the phone of the respondent and smashed the phone over the head of one of the other two. About this the respondent said: ‘it was terrible, but at least it was the phone that broke and not my friend’s head’. The ride to the border took around 2 to 3 hours with at least 30 minutes of ride in dirt roads. Inside the van there were 6 Turkish nationals as well, but at halfway of the ride the van stopped and more people were pushed inside, making for them all almost impossible to have enough air to breath. Once reached the border, at around 2.30 p.m., the group was asked to get out of the vehicle and the respondent saw at least other 3 police van and around 8 more Border police officers, controlling a group of more than 25 people. At this moment a collective pushback of more than 40 people took place. The respondent couldn’t identify the exact location of the pushback but could tell that it was only 3 kilometres away from the city centre of the Bosnian city of Velika Kladusha.
The-policeman-smashed-the-phone-over-the-head-of-my-friend
Once on the Bosnian side of the border, the group had to walk to reach the city centre and call a taxi to be brought back to Bihac.