returned several or more times before succeeding in getting through; 2) being held for several days to a week at a police station in a border town in dirty, overcrowded conditions, where detainees are often mistreated and sometimes beaten; 3) being trucked in groups of 5o to 100 people to the river at nightfall; and 4) after Greek police officials see no sign of Turkish gendarmes on the other side of the river, being put on small boats in groups of 10 and sent across the river: I wanted to have a better life and improve my conditions, and so I tried to go to Greece. I tried 10 times and was always captured and sent back. The first time was in February 2oo4. That time I spent 12 or 15 days in Greece and was caught and sent back. The last time I went I was returned from Greece on April 24, 2008. I walked four days to Orestiada, was caught and detained for one week by the Greeks. I was kept in the police station by the village. It was the border police who caught me. They don’t let you speak. They just ask your name. There was no Arabic speaker there and no lawyer. No written document was given to me. They removed the sim card and battery from my phone, threw them away and gave the phone back to me. There were 20 people in the room in the police station where I was held. It was crowded and the blankets were very dirty. There were mattresses on the floor. They behaved to us as though we weren’t human. When you needed something and insisted a lot, they beat you really badly. This didn’t happen to me, but the time before this when I was detained in Greece, there was a Tunisian guy who was sick and when he tried to say he was sick they beat him so badly he bled from the mouth and nose. I saw this happen. At around 6 pm [April 23 or 24, 2008], we were put in a truck and taken at the border to the river. They slowly got us down from the truck and told us to be quiet and put us in a row. They were observing the other side of the river bank to see if there were any soldiers there. When there was none, they put us in a small boat driven by one person with another man standing in the front with a gun. It was around 10 persons to a boat and the boat was wooden with a motor. The person standing was in a uniform and the driver was a civilian. The driver spoke Turkish. Around 40 people 39 Human Rights Watch November 2008