“They did not give us any space to talk or to ask for asylum or to say anything.”
The respondent was pushed back three times from Greece to Turkey. His last attempt was on May 25th 2019. He was caught in Komotini, Greece four days before that (May 21st) by the Greek police. Here, the police took his phone, put him in a bus and sent him to the border. There, the Greek police put on black masks and sent him back across the Evros river. The respondent remembers being pushed back close to the town of Ipsala in Turkey, because eventually this was where the Turkish military caught him. After the military released the respondent, he walked back towards the border for four days until he reached a town called Mikro Dereio in Greece.
In this city, there was a mosque and near that mosque, there was a big house full of migrants and refugees. All the people were going there and staying inside. And it was there that the police caught them.
‘It was 11:30 in the morning, when two police officers came into the house where we were hiding and searched us. They found 200 euros in my pocket and stole it from me’.
There were two other police officers waiting outside, but the respondent said they couldn’t see what was going on. One of the guys outside spoke French fluently, but he was a Greek guy in a police uniform. He was around 25-28 years old. The other guy outside was the captain or the driver. He was around 50 years old. The respondent said they didn’t see the other two police officers take his money.
‘On the same day, they took us to the Turkish border. On the way, we stopped in a parking lot. Here the police changed out and switched’.
The respondent told us the four officers who had apprehended him went away and a new group came to take their place. These new guys drove us to yet another group who were wearing masks on the border. The respondent was the first guy to be inspected because he was the last to get out of the car. The officers found $350 euros hidden in his underwear that the other police hadn’t seen. When the “commandos” found it, they shredded the money in front of him. They even cut his passport in half. Then they put the respondent inside of a car and drove for some more time.
‘After I got out, they beat me with a big stick and also gave me electrical shocks in the back of my legs. They did this twice’.
When the respondent tried to speak to one of the commandos, the masked man beat him.
‘They did not give us any space to talk or to ask for asylum or to say anything’.
At 21h30 there were so many commandos surrounding the respondent and his group. The respondent said he couldn't remember how many but they were everywhere. When he was sitting on the ground, there were two guys on both of his sides. They started to beat the guys in front of him, one by one. The first guy, they beat in the chest and then they moved on to the next guy.
‘When they came to stand in front of me, I tried to put my hands in front of my face, but he (the commando) beat me in the chest and I felt like I couldn’t breathe’.
This all happened close to Edirne. The respondent noted the commandos made them walk from the Greek side of the border to Edirne after beating them - even with all of their injuries.
When they set them free on the Turkish side of the border, the respondent hid in the forest so that the Turkish military would not find him. He believed if the Turkish military caught him, they would send him back to Istanbul - without his passport he would be in a precarious situation.
‘So I hid in the forest. I heard the military arresting people all around me, but they didn’t find me and I stayed there until morning. In the morning, I left the forest and waited in Edirne until nightfall when I crossed the border again’.
The respondent suffers lasting consequences from the officers’ brutality. He is now in Greece without any kind of identification, no money, no phone and sustains physical injuries.
‘When I move my arm, I feel a lot of pain it feels like my ribs are moving and are in the wrong spot’.
When we spoke to the respondent, he was outraged and disheartened by his experience in Europe.
‘I have seen what they do to people, to refugees. It’s the same thing I saw in Morocco. This kind of treatment without any care about the law, is the reason I left that country’.
The respondent told us that the Greek police, when compared to Moroccan authorities, are basically the same. He couldn’t see a difference. After this experience, he believes there is no difference between dictatorships and democracies.
‘They pushed me back even though I am a refugee. They punished me because I am a refugee’.