A Syrian refugee reports on his experience after being removed by charter flight to Spain on the 3rd September.

On the night of 2/9, officials came to the detention centre and told me I have a flight in a few hours. Police took me in a van to the immigration office, telling me they would let me talk when I got there. I told them I have applied for asylum in the UK. I don’t want to go to Spain. They put me in a van, and made me wait in the van until the morning. I didn’t leave the van for even one minute. 

They put us on the plane. There were four police around me. They held my wrists down so I couldn’t move. If i blinked they would consider it a sudden movement. They didn’t let me move at all. 

I asked for my passport and ID from the UK police. They told me that we would be given them when we arrived in Spain. We landed but we were not given our documents. I tried to go back to the UK police to get my passport, and a spanish police officer hit me hard on my shoulder and didn’t let me go back. 

They put us on a bus, took us to the airport, made us wait a little. Then they stamped our deportation paper and ejected us outside the airport. We were waiting about three hours. We had no money, no food or water. We were hungry. I went to the train station. I passed the barrier, with two others. The police caught us, beat me and broke my phone. The police hit me with a baton, on my legs, back and shoulder. I was detained for about an hour in the train station. They didn’t ask me anything about my situation. He just said you have no rights here. You have nothing here, you can’t come into the station, you have no passport or ID. They let us go about an hour later, and as I was taken outside the police officer hit me again, this time kicking me in the back. He said you have to leave Spain. I have no passport. We couldn’t find the rest of the group, and it took us about 2.5 hours to find them. 

We found them outside the airport, and there were more police there. They treated us badly. They didn’t let us sit anywhere. They kept telling us we had to leave Spain. 

We slept in the street that night, on the concrete. We felt scared. No cover, cars coming and going. There were drunk people in the street, and we were scared they’d attack us. There were cars which stopped and took pictures of us, laughing and mocking us. We didn’t sleep one bit. It felt like two nights, not one. 

In the UK we felt like humans for 3 months. Here we were treated inhumanely. People all night looking at us. It felt awful. We started crying. It was cold. My body hurt. I was hit by the police and then had to sleep on the street. I still haven’t slept. We have suffered a lot. Since I’ve left the UK I’ve been hit twice, once in the airport and once in the station. I have relatives in the UK, I have no-one here. My father died on 6/8, can you imagine, and then this happened. 

There’s a huge difference between Spain and the UK. The police, the people, we are not treated like humans here. We have no passport, we can’t walk about freely. We have nothing to prove our identity. I want to go back to the UK. I can’t even talk to my family, the police broke my phone and I don’t have their numbers. They don’t know where I am. How am I supposed to contact them?