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The police officer started verbally attacking him, hitting him in the head and slapped his face several times

Date & Time 2018-06-13
Location Žeželj, Slovenia
Reported by No Name Kitchen
Coordinates 45.9523505, 14.5716172
Pushback from Slovenia, Croatia
Pushback to Bosnia
Taken to a police station yes
Minors involved yes
WLTI* involved no
Men involved no
Age 16 - 39
Group size 4
Countries of origin Afghanistan
Treatment at police station or other place of detention personal information taken, papers signed, no translator present
Overall number of policemen and policewomen involved unknown
Violence used beating (with batons/hands/other)
Police involved 11 Slovenian border police officers, 2 cars (one van and one smaller car), 2 police dogs

The interviewee and his friends left Velika Kladusa (Bosnia), crossed Croatia, and were walking within Slovenia, when they were detected by the Slovenian border police. Border police officers asked them to identify themselves with their names, nationality, documents and afterwards the minors were questioned about their parents (e.g. whether their parents died or whether they travel with a mother of father).

One police officer noticed that the interviewee was using a GPS and based on this, he accused him of being a smuggler. The police officer started verbally attacking him, hitting him in the head and slapped his face several times. No one else got physically attacked. Afterwards, he and all his friends were taken by van to a police station in Pavlovasa. The whole group spent in total 7 hours in the police station where they had to write down their names, age, names of their parents and other identifying information. The interviewee expressed his intention to seek asylum in Slovenia, but he was denied access to asylum procedures.

“I said that I wanted to stay here in Slovenia that I did not want to go to Italia or anywhere else. I said I wanted to work here. But he said “no, no working, no immigration, you go back”. He did not give me any chance to apply for asylum”

The police forced the men to sign a document, which they did not understand because it was written in the Slovenian language and the men were not provided with a translator. According to a Slovenian translator, who later assisted with translation of this document, the document falsely states that they were provided a translator. The document also states that he left Afghanistan because of poverty, and does not mention the Taliban persecution that he told the officers were his reason for leaving Afghanistan. It further states that he had a legal guardian, his cousin, which is also a wrong information that enabled the police officers to not to treat him as an unaccompanied minor. In the end, police drove the whole group to the Croatian-Bosnian border, from where they walked back to Velika Kladusa and reached Kladusa around 11:15 pm.