Y.H. (40 years old), wife N.T. (32 years old), A.H. (m) (15 years old), S.K. (f) (13 years old), S.H. (f) (7 years old), S.H. (f) (9 years old), from Afghanistan143/ pushed back from Lesvos on 13.7.2013 Y.H. (husband): ‘We were in Ayvalık. (…). We were 15 Afghans. (…) This happened on Saturday 13.7.2013 at 2 o’clock in the night. We were on a rubber boat (…). N.T. (wife): (…) We were so close to Greece that we could see the cars passing in the hill, going up and down. I could see a person walking. It was at dawn. (…) The coastguard vessel sailed towards our boat. (…) The men in our boat told us to lift our children up in the air. When they saw them, they stopped. (…)The boat was yesterday in the port of Mytilene, tied nearby the tents, on the right side of the port. When we go back there to take the ship to Piraeus, we will show it to you. It had inflatable boat balloons hanging out. They took us up from the front. There was a space they sail the boat. In the back, there was something small. In front there was a taller room. We could not sit. It was edgy in the front. It had a computer and a satellite. It was of light grey color. There were four officers, three of them wearing full face masks. (…). They didn’t talk to us, but they talked on the phone. (…) They tied our boat with a rope in the back of their vessel and pulled us towards Turkey (…). They talked on their mobiles for 3-4 times. We thought they were talking with the Turkish police, to come and take us. (…) They put us back on our boat, where these red buoys are. (…) We were forced back to the boat. There was no air left in it. They then left, leaving us there. Y.H. (husband): (...) When they left us in the Turkish waters, we weren’t that close. We could see the city lights, but from a certain distance. When we were in Greece, some of the people said that they would jump in the sea and pull the boat offshore. In Greece were that close. A.H. (son): (…) One by one all men fell in the sea, leaving my mother and my sisters in the boat. They were taking the water out of the boat with the water bottles and we, the men, were pulling the boat to the shore. We remember the lighthouse that there is there. We went there and the Turkish police arrested us. They took us to the police station. (…) They thought that my father was the smuggler and beat him. (…) They kicked and punched him. (…) 143 | Interviewed in Mytilene (Lesvos island, Greece), July 23, 2013 38 | aNNEX-iNTERVIEWS N.T. (wife): I had in mind to arrive in Europe, so that my kids can go to school and when the boat had taken on water, I said to myself, maybe this few bread we had in Afghanistan, maybe it was better. What have I done? I brought my kids to drown them in Greece. I was in despair’. A. (35 years old), from Syria144/ pushed back from Samos on the 22.8.13 A: ‘We were 50 persons from Syria and Eritrea. Among us there were four children and seven women. (…) Around 10 o’clock in the morning we were close to the island. Some meters away from us, was the Greek coastguard and they arrested us. It was a big vessel with a firearm on it of 12.7 mm. There were around 10 police officers on board. Two of them were wearing full-face masks. They told us to stop, to raise our hands up and not to move. They called and a second boat came. It was a smaller one, around 15mt long. On the second smaller boat all those who were on board, had their faces covered with full-face masks. The number of that boat was 84030. They used their arms (M4). They told us to get on the boat one by one and they hit each one with the gunpoint. They didn’t hit the women and the children. They made us sit down, on the big boat. They took our clothes, our mobiles and threw them in the sea. They spoke among them. The first time they told us to put our hands behind our neck and then they turned our t-shirts over our heads. They didn’t do that to the women and the children. As we sat down they hit us again with the gunpoint. (…) They took everything, also the engine of the boat. There were two small paddles, which they also took. Someone from our group called the Turkish emergency number (…) We told them that the Greeks left us there. The Turkish coastguards came and took us offshore’. K.A. (Syria)145/ pushed back from the strait of Samos on 27.9.13 146 K.A.: ‘We were ten Syrians in a boat, in the strait of Samos. We had almost arrived, when suddenly a very fast boat, with men dressed in black arrived. They came closer and slowly started pushing us, by bumping into our boat, until we arrived back on the Turkish coast. We were afraid, also because in that part there were rocks in the sea. They literally left us offshore, in the Turkish side. We jumped offshore and walked (…)’. 144 | Interviewed in Izmir (Turkey), August 24, 2013 145 | See also: Push-back on the 8th of August 2013 (Farmakonisi military island) and on the 28th of August 2013 146 | Interviewed in Athens (Greece); October 2, 2013 aNNEX-iNTERVIEWS | 39