BIRN Fact-check: What Croatia Is Not Saying About the ‘Nigerian students’ Case

The two Nigerian students who said the Croatian police expelled them to Bosnia, assuming that, as Africans, they were illegal immigrants, will soon be returned home - but the mystery around their case has not been cleared up.

Bosnia's Security Minister, Dragan Mektic, on Wednesday said the students had agreed to enter the Assisted Voluntary Return Programme, by which they can be sent home with their consent and without being exposed to any additional procedures. He clarified that neither of them had sought asylum in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Abia Uchenna Alexandro and Eboh Kenneth Chinedu told the Sarajevo independent media outlet Zurnal that the Croatian police detained them on a tram in Zagreb and drove them to a police station. They said they were then taken to a forest near the border with northwest Bosnia and forced at gunpoint to cross the border. 

The students said they were scared and did not know what to do, and that other migrants, also forced by the Croatian police to cross into Bosnia, then took them through the forest to a camp in Velika Kladusa, in northwest Bosnia. Bosnian media said they are currently held at the migrant centre in East Sarajevo.

Reports raise more questions about pushbacks:

The story has inevitably raised fresh questions about Croatia's treatment of migrants and asylum seekers, even though the two students do not belong to this category.

Rights groups have repeatedly accused the Croatian police of using heavy-handed tactics with migrants and refugees, including a strategy of unlawful and often violent pushbacks over the border.

Ranko Ostojic, chairman of Croatia's Domestic Policy and National Security Committee, and a former Interior Minister, on December 4 requested a statement from the...

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