“ All the young guys without families were sent back to Idlib.”
The first time the respondent tried to make the river crossing, it was sometime in the beginning of May 2018, on the second day or in the very beginning of Ramadan. They were caught by the Turkish army. They took photos of them. In the beginning of June they tried to cross again. They made it to the river, crossed the river, and walked for 30-45 minutes. It was very quiet there, and things were simple. After they had crossed the river, they walked from the riverside until they arrived near a village, a small village with a population of only 330 persons. He knows that, because there was a sign at the entrance of that village on which it was written.
The police came and started asking them: ‘who are you? What are you doing here?’. He was with his mother in law, his wife, their children, and one young boy with his sister. He did not know them very well, but they had all travelled together. They told the police ‘we are tourists’. The police said that they wanted to take them to the police station. They knew that they were refugees.
The policemen, who they first met on the street, were speaking Greek. His wife speaks very good English. After the police had figured out that they were not tourists, they started speaking English with them, but crappy English. His wife understood that they were taking them to the police station – which was not a police station but a dirty room. Then an old car came and brought them to the room.
The police station was centrally located in a village - that village with 330 people. It was a village on the hill, there were bars, churches, a lot of things. The village was very, very beautiful and clean.
Before they took them to the room, they first made a full check-up of each of them already there at the police station. The police asked themif they had a phone or not. Then they put them in the van and brought them to the room. It was so dark that you could not see anything. There was only a small window at the back of the car, but he could only see the road. And they did not take them to the police station as they said. Instead, they brought them to a closed room. They put them in there. Every refugee that they met, the police, they brought to this small room. It was a collecting place.
From that village they drove for about 5 kilometers or 5 minutes, slow speed, to a remote building or the ‘room’. That room was near to a small hill, and there was a swamp. There were a few small trees, not like a forest, you could count the trees. It was close to the river. Except for that ‘room’, he could not see any other building. That building was located between the river and that hill that he could see. It was built as for it to be hidden, so that if someone would pass over the road they would not see. The building was black, with a black steel door. The walls were – it seemed as a new building, these walls were mostly of a grey color.
When they arrived at the room, there were already around 10 persons present. They arrived there somewhat after 8am. Outside of the room, the police took their watches, rings, belts, shoes and clothes. They said that they were going to give those back to them, after they would leave from there. In that room, they were left without water and food from the early morning until the late evening. From 8 am until 8 pm there were a lot of different groups coming into that room. Every once and a while they were bringing in people, and by the evening at 8 pm, there were more than 50 persons in that room. At 8 pm they were being delivered to the camp commando’s at the river.
The room was [around] 6 or 7 meter by 4 meter. It was full of garbage and dirt and it was not clean. The refugees were tired, each of them wanted to lie down and rest a little bit. But this was not possible as the floor was too dirty. And that place was completely empty. Nothing to sit on, no beds, or toilet. Just the very dirty floor. The people put their clothes on the floor so they could sit. When they arrived in the morning, there was still a place at the floor of the room to sit down. But at the end of the day, there were so many people, there was no place to sit or rest. They could not even breathe. There was one small window, and they were standing in a line in front of that small window to catch up a little fresh air.
They asked them [the police] for water so many times, so many times, and also especially for the kids – they were very hungry. They just gave water for the women and the kids, not for the men. They were begging them [the police] to let them go to the toilet, to go out. The women and children were allowed to use a toilet, upon asking. But the men were not allowed to go to the toilet. The women were allowed just for 10 minutes to go out and then to go back again.
Except for the police or the people with them in that room, they did not see anybody else there. There was no military, no commando’s around at all. Only police. All of these people there spoke Greek. There was only one man who spoke English, not very good, and the only way to interact with them was to ask them if – only the women – could go to the toilet or get some fresh air. While they were inside, they did not take anybody out of that room. Everybody stayed inside. They were allowed only to go out to the toilet and not to anything else.
[Mother in-law: It was a Sunday. When she walked outside, to the toilet, she could not see anything in particular, it was just woods and plants around, nothing else. There was this sound of like it was a place near to the river – because of the sound of the frogs and of the water. That room looked like a cave, because half of the room entered under the ground. When they arrived at that room there was one girl inside, and at a certain point she was just out of consciousness. She fell down on the floor, could not breathe. They [the police] opened the door and asked what happened. When they saw this, they allowed her to go out for a little bit and to catch a breath, and then they put her in again.
It was at night when they brought them a big military van. The whole group was between 40 and 50 people. They put all the people in that van. They were – he would count 45 minutes driving on the road. The car was closed. Upon arrival, they realized that they were at the river, the same place as where they came from. There, the commando’s in military uniforms were waiting for them. The police gave them their bags, the jackets, the stuff, the phones and everything else that belonged to them to the commando’s. The commando’s did not give those phones back.
The commando’s, the people who brought them from the van to the river and put them in the boats, were wearing masks. They were strongly built and heavily muscled. They were wearing military dark-green uniforms, the same uniform as he saw earlier. You could not see their hair. Everything was covered except for their eyes. All had masks, black masks. The police had called them and told them to wait at the river. When they arrived, there stood these men, and the boat they had already prepared. There was a big car standing next to them. There were five of them who were with weapons, guns, pointing to the people. And there were three of them who were checking the refugees to see if they had anything with them. They were communicating with each other just with signs. He could not hear any word from them. They communicated also to them with signs – pointing with a finger at the mouth to the men (to be silent) – and to the women that they had to calm down [exemplifies with his hands go up and down]. With their hands they were pulling their clothes to remove their extra clothes, jackets and also their shoes. They were not allowed to talk. Not with them, and not amongst each other.
They did not get their shoes back. When they got into that room, also there it happened that a full check was done on each of them. They asked them about their phones and took them. But the police allowed them to take their stuff back as soon as they got outside of that room – their passport, money, important papers etc. But that was not allowed at the river. They [commando’s] took a lot of the peoples clothes and tried to burn them. From the children they took nothing. The women could hold their jackets. From the men, they took both the shoes and jackets. In the end, they had their phones, bags and clothes taken. But the papers, passport, money and important papers they got back.
Then they brought a small boat – they separated the group in different smaller groups of only 4 or 5 persons per boat to the other side of the river.
The boy with his sister he mentioned earlier - she started to scream and cry - and they [the commando’s] hit her. The boy was a minor, he was 13 years old. The girl was 18 years old, and she had serious problems with her leg [verification: these problems existed already in Istanbul]. She needed a surgery. She had family in Germany, so they wanted to get to Greece. When they were trying to force them into the boat, they divided the group into smaller groups. That is when they separated them from each other, the brother and sister. She did not want to get divorced from her brother. That is why she screamed. That is why they beat her.
And also another guy got beaten. There was one guy who they were forcing, together with the other people, to go on the boat. The guy was not comfortable with sitting in that boat. They were pushing him to put down his head and to look down, not up. Everybody tried to avoid speaking or so, because they were not allowed to talk, but those who did, they got beaten by them.
After that they got pushed back to Turkey, they went to some village on Turkish territory, not far from the river – Allibik. There the gendarmerie was called, the Turkish army came and kept them for 3 nights, him and his family, in a military barrack. And after that they transferred them with all the people to a closed camp named Urfa, at the Turkish-Syrian border.
At that first military barrack in Turkey, there were more than 300-400 people – a lot more of them were already there before them, before they arrived. In that barrack, they separated them in two groups: one group, his group, was at a different time transferred to Edirne, and then from Edirne further to Urfa. The camp in Urfa was closed with high security and no one was allowed to freely enter or exit. In that camp, there were many different nationalities. Most of them were Kurdish, but there were also Iraqi, Egyptian, Iran, Arabs – also from Syria, Tunesia etc. There were also other families and women, but most of the people there were young single men. After ten days that they spent in that camp in Urfa, they went back to Istanbul and spent two months there.
[They got free from Urfa, because] After ten days in that camp, they took their fingerprints and they got a police note that allowed them to walk freely around in that camp.. All the young guys without families were sent back to Idlib. But because he had a family, they were after 10 days allowed to go.
On the 5th of September, 2018, they travelled again and arrived at the borders to cross the river for the third time. They spent the first two nights at the borders, on Greek territory, and on the 7th of September they arrived here in this camp.
In this period [between 5-7 September], they did not meet any Greek police or other authorities. They were hiding themselves in the woods and bushes. There were police, but they were trying to avoid them. They had children with them, and they were being very silent and cautious not to be seen. At a certain point they found a van that could bring them from that point to Alexandroupoli, and from there they drove to here.