The nonrefoulement obligation applies not only to direct return into the hands of persecutors and torturers, but to indirect returns as well. That is, states cannot absolve themselves of responsibility by sending a refugee to a non-persecutory state that in turn sends them to a third persecutory state, as explained by the U.K. House of Lords: Article 33 [the nonrefoulement provision of the Refugee Convention] can be breached indirectly as well as directly. Thus for a country to return a refugee to a state from which he will then be returned by the government of that state to a territory where his life or freedom will be threatened will be as much a breach of Article 33 as if the first country had itself returned him there direct.149 The only nationalities that Turkey has been willing to accept under the Greece-Turkey readmission agreement have been Iranians and Iraqis. A 2004 study of Turkish immigration practices found that every one of the 1,006 people readmitted to Turkey from Greece per this agreement was an Iranian or an Iraqi, and all were returned to their home country. It found, “These illegal migrants, 270 Iranians and 736 Iraqis, were handed over to the Turkish authorities between October 2002 and January 2004. They were subsequently repatriated to Iran and Iraq.”150 Turkey is still forcibly returning Iraqis who are caught at the Greek border by bussing them to Iraq. UNHCR reported that on April 23, 2008 Turkey deported 42 Iraqi nationals to Iraq who had been caught at the Greek border. As UNHCR reported: The Turkish police then took the 18, which included five Iranian refugees recognized by UNHCR, to a place where the river separates the two countries, and forced them to swim across. According to witnesses interviewed by UNHCR, four persons, including a refugee from Iran, were swept away by the strong river current and drowned.151 149 R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Adan and Aitseguer [2000] UKHL 67, per Lord Hobhouse, cited in James C. Hathaway, The Rights of Refugees under International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) , p. 326. 150 Joanna Apap, Sergio Carrera, and Kemal Kirişci, “Turkey in the European Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice,” EU-Turkey Working Papers, No. 3, August 2004, p. 23. 151 “UNHCR Deplores Refugee Expulsion by Turkey which Resulted in Four Deaths,” UNHCR Press Release, April 25, 2008. Human Rights Watch discussed this incident with Police Chief Türedi, who vehemently denied that it happened, he said that the Iranians were in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır at the time they supposedly drowned in the border river. (Human Rights Watch interview with Türedi, Security Directorate, June 11, 2008.) 65 Human Rights Watch November 2008