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“They slapped my husband over and over again”
The main respondent is a 23-year-old woman from Afghanistan. According to the respondent, she was with 4 other people when they were pushed back from Croatia to Bosnia Herzegovina. The respondent states that she was accompanied by her 28-year-old husband and another Iranian couple, a 40-year-old woman and her husband, a middle-aged man of unknown age, and another young Afghan man whom they encountered during the pushback process. According to the respondent, on the 25th of December 2023, the group of four started to walk from the Borici camp in Bihac in the evening and crossed the border on foot at around midnight. She reports that after crossing the Croatian border, they continued on foot through the forest until about 8 a.m. in the morning. The respondent reports that at around 8.30 a.m., they were stopped and apprehended by a group of two uniformed people. Based on the description of the uniforms that were dark blue with Croatian flags, the respondent claims that they were Croatian Police. The respondent states that the police officers arrived in a white vehicle, described as “police van”.
According to the respondent, they were subjected to a body search by the police officers, and 5 mobile phones, power banks, and cables were confiscated. She claims that the police broke all the phones. “You know how hard it is to continue without the phones, they broke all of it. Because they also know it”. The respondent reports that then the police asked them to show their documents. The respondent states that they specifically asked for passports but the members of the transit group told the officers that they did not have any. According to he respondent, then the police asked the group where they came from. “They didn’t do anything to the women but they slapped the men while shouting at them. They slapped my husband over and over again.” The respondent states that the two police officers called for another police team and then another white police van arrived at the location with two male police officers in it with the same kinds of uniforms. However, when this vehicle arrived there was another man in it who had been detained earlier, the respondent said he was an Afghan young man. The respondent reports that the whole group was forced into this police van. She recalls traveling in this van for about half an hour, but that they were taken to a different and distant place from the point where they had crossed the border in Bosnia. According to the respondent, after being forced to get out of the vehicle, the group of five was pushed back into Bosnia and Herzegovina by Croatian police at around 9 a.m. on the 26th of December, near Zeljava Air Base, close to the border in the Croatian village of Zeljava.
The respondent states that after walking for some time in the forest, the group had to pay a lot of money for a taxi, which took them back to the Borici camp in Bihac.
overview
5 people ,
from Afghanistan and Iran,
aged 23-40 years old.