Migrants ‘shot, abused and beaten by Bulgarian police’

BULGARIAN police have been abusing migrants, including shootings, beatings and pistol-whippings while using dogs to force them back over the border with Turkey, an investigation claims.

The alleged abuses are detailed by the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, which interviewed 110 migrants, mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, after they arrived from Bulgaria in the Serbian town of Dimitrovgrad.

The refugees, many of whom had walked for days through the mountains, who had contact with the police all reported being abused.

One Afghan migrant claimed he paid a €400 (£280) bribe to Bulgarian police after being detained outside Sofia. In a separate incident, a refugee said he was “hit on the head with a pistol grip”.

Hamayoon Noorhaman, a refugee from Afghanistan, told the Press Asso

ciation: “At one checkpoint, a police- man was carrying a piece of a tree and hit me with it.”

Another refugee said a Bulgarian officer “pressed a gun to his forehead” before beating him and taking his money, valuables and mobile phones.

Two other refugees paid €2,500 to be smuggled into Bulgaria, only to be picked up by police near Sofia and forced to pay a €200 bribe not to be arrested. When they fled into woods, police opened fire, hitting two of them.

One group reported being locked into a camp after crossing illegally into Bulgaria, where they said authorities “deprived [them] of food and water for three days and physically and psychologically molested [them]”.

Nikolina Milic, of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, said such conduct was “totally unacceptable”. Oxfam, which funded the study, said accounts of abuse tallied with research from organisations such as the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Sofia.