“They didn’t say anything to us. We didn’t know what was happening.”

The respondent, a 28-year-old man from Sudan, was standing at the Calais Bus Station at approximately 9 am, on January 22nd, 2024, with a 22-year-old man, also from Sudan.

The respondent described that they were waiting for a bus to take them to an accommodation facility/shelter, when several police officers approached the two men (he did not remember the exact number of officers), and pushed them into the back of an unmarked van. The respondent and his friend were not told why they were being taken. The respondent could recall that the police officers were wearing black uniforms; however, he could not remember any specific markings on the uniforms that would indicate which brigade they belonged to.

The respondent reported that he and the other man were taken to what looked like a police station/detention facility, and were locked in a holding cell for a total of 7 hours.

According to the respondent, upon arrival, the officers wrote down the names and nationality of the two men and confiscated their phones, which were never returned. Then, the respondent told the police officers that he had an asylum claim appointment in Lille in the afternoon, and that he already had his fingerprints registered in France. The respondent recalled that the officers said they would call the office in Lille to confirm the appointment, and then disappeared for several hours. Upon their return, the officers told the respondent that his asylum claim had been rejected. The respondent reported that he assumed no phone call was actually made. 

Outside of this exchange, the officers did not communicate with the two men for the whole day. The two men were also never offered any food or water throughout the day, nor were they offered medical care, legal counsel, or a translator, given that both men only speak Arabic fluently. 

“They didn’t say anything to us. We didn’t know what was happening.”

The respondent reported being released in the late afternoon, after which the police officers told the respondent he must leave France within the next week, and provided no documents/records to confirm or prove that the two men were, in fact, held for 7 hours.