'They didn't give a damn': first footage of Croatian police 'brutality'

Migrants who allegedly suffer savage beatings by state officials call it ‘the game’. But as shocking evidence suggests, attempting to cross the Bosnia-Croatia border is far from mere sport
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Lorenzo Tondo in Velika Kladusa, Bosnia
@lorenzo_tondo

Wed 14 Nov 2018 13.44 GMT
Last modified on Wed 14 Nov 2018 17.34 GMT

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Migrants outside their tents in the Bosnian town of Velika Kladusa, close to the border with Croatia
Migrants keep warm outside their tents in the Bosnian town of Velika Kladusa, close to the border with Croatia. Many who try to cross suffer injury at the hands of the Croatian police. Photograph: Alessio Mamo for the Guardian

As screams ring out through the cold night air, Sami, hidden behind bushes, begins to film what he can.

“The Croatian police are torturing them. They are breaking people’s bones,’’ Sami whispers into his mobile phone, as the dull thumps of truncheons are heard.

Then silence. Minutes go by before Hamdi, Mohammed and Abdoul emerge from the woods, faces bruised from the alleged beating, mouths and noses bloody, their ribs broken.

Asylum seekers from Algeria, Syria and Pakistan, they had been captured by the Croatian police attempting to cross the Bosnia-Croatia border into the EU, and brutally beaten before being sent back.

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