“A pregnant Iranian woman was hit a lot and his brothers son was hit on the head as well.”
The respondent was with a group of around 40 people. They had walked for 2-2.5 hours from Turkey to Greece during the night, pausing until the morning before walking a further 4 hours. They arrived to a small village (name unknown) where there was a grain field and a river up to their waist. They went to a church and spoke to some Greek people there. The priest guided them to the police station, but they weren’t allowed in because of a lack of space inside the station. They were told by the police that they were in the wrong place and to leave for another city. These police officers were sympathetic to their situation. People bought them tickets for transport to different cities, they got tickets to Athens and took a bus around 1pm. After two hours they arrived at Alexandroupoli. From here, they knew they could take a train to Thessaloniki and then to Athens.
They entered the train but after five minutes a Captain came with police wearing black clothes and masks, and asked them for the Kharti (police note). They had heard about the Kharti process while they were in Turkey, they did not have the document but wanted to apply for it. The police asked them to get off the train so that they could issue a Kharti for them. Up until this point the police were strict with them but fine. Once they have gathered them all, they got off the train. The Kharti would take 2-3 days to produce. They told them they would send them to Athens where more services were available. He was with about 40 people at this stage.
Instead, they took them to a police department four minutes from the train station. The single men walked to the station, whilst women and children were taken by car. No one protested walking as they thought they were getting a Kharti. At the police station, the officers took their phones, perfumes and anything they had which was expensive. They separated the men and women on different floors, inspected them, looked through their stuff, took their phones and other stuff and put it in three bags.
Them asked them to get their clothes and leave the police station, saying they would be bringing them to another camp. As they gathered outside, they saw new people joining the group. The police came out and handed them back their belongings, except for phones, headsets and expensive things. A prisoner van with three windows (20cm by 20cm) came at this moment and at this point, the respondent knew the police had been lying to them. There were cops covered in black, and they began hitting them and squeezing them into the van. Pregnant women, even children were being hit alongside everyone else. People got in the van because they did not want to be hit.
When the respondent looked outside the window of the van, he saw that they were in the middle of a city, not an abandoned area. They drove them until they arrived to the water. It was dark when they were asked to exit the vehicle. Anyone that refused got into trouble and they hit people randomly, for example a pregnant Iranian woman was hit a lot and his brothers son was hit on the head as well. They gave them back their bags without the mobiles and chargers.
Policemen came, wearing black masks and holding batons. They filled the boat three times with around 20 people, even though the boats were made to hold only 12 people. The boat was only 4cm above the water. There were no Greek police in the boat but they followed them on a motorboat to make sure they crossed to the Turkish water line. It was around 7/7.30pm when they arrived to Turkey, then they walked until 12.30pm where the Turkish army stopped them. There were 67 people from different countries of different genders and ages. They were kept in Jail in turkey for 3 days. He said that some of the Greek police and the Turkish police were kind. But the border police were harsh.