'If you come back, we will kill you!’

The respondents are a transit group consisting of 5 Iranian men, aged between 23 and 36. They were pushed back from Serbia to North Macedonia on Friday, August 1st, 2025.

The respondents described that the transit group had walked approximately 7km into Serbia before they were apprehended at around 07:00 am, at coordinates (42.2543204, 21.6978364). They reported being apprehended by two men, who wore navy blue uniforms with multiple badges, whom the respondents identified as Serbian police officers. They believed that the police had been hiding close by, waiting to ambush people when they passed. They did not notice any surveillance equipment that could have been used to locate them.

As soon as they were apprehended by the police, all five respondents were beaten. They described the police beating them with their fists, kicking them with their feet, and hitting them with their batons. At the time the testimony was taken, three of the men still had visible wounds, photographed with consent to share.

The transit group reported that their belongings were also searched. Two of the respondents had their phones broken, an action they believe was because they had a map of their route on their phones. The police destroyed all of their SIM cards as well.

Following this police assault, the respondents recalled the police making a phone call to a third officer who arrived in a navy-blue, unmarked van. They met this van on the road at coordinates (42.2539812, 21.7004878), and were then driven for around 10 minutes back to the border with North Macedonia to coordinates (42.2388484, 21.6910391). Before they left, the police told them

 ‘If you come back, we will kill you’

The group reported that the police spoke to them in very limited English, with one commenting: 

‘While they were beating us, they were speaking with their body language’.