Bulgarian police “shot” 19-year-old refugee who wanted to enter the European Union

stabbed in the chest by bulgarian police when trying to enterEuropean Union to apply for asylum. Abdullah Mohammed he is a 19 year old Syrian boy. Last October 3, I was in a wooded area on the border between Bulgaria and Turkey when they shot him🇧🇷

The video published exclusively by the collaborative journalism platform Lighthouse Reports, shows the young man on his knees, clutching his chest and bleeding from his mouth. He is then quickly surrounded by a group of men shouting something in Arabic, before being taken away.

Lighthouse Reports claims that this is the first footage of a refugee next to hit to a European border. The incident raises questions about the EU’s approach to the issuethe migrants🇧🇷

Speaking from Istanbul, Abdullah Mohammed said in an interview that it was “obvious” that they wanted to kill him. “The distance between him and me the shooter was very short, I would say 10 to 15 meters,” he said. “He shot to kill”. A medical report states that a bullet passed through his hand and entered his chest before stopping an inch from the heart🇧🇷

There Bulgaria he claims that his own border guards were near the scene of the shooting, but they deny firing the projectile. However, eyewitnesses and forensic evidence, compiled by Lighthouse Reports and several European media outlets working with the Dutch investigative collective, indicated that the shots came from where the Bulgarian guards were.

Before he was shot, the 19-year-old allegedly entered Bulgaria illegally with a group of around 20 other Syrians, intending to seek asylum in the EU. After walking for six hours, Abdullah and his other traveling companions were forcibly taken by Bulgarian police across the border to Peru🇧🇷 The men began to protest and throw stones at the women. border guards🇧🇷 At that moment the boy would have been shot.

Analysis by an independent forensic expert as part of the Lighthouse Reports investigation indicated that the footage they came from the Bulgarian side of the border. For its part, the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior said that a border policeman was injured by a stone, according to Sky News.

It is illegal for EU countries to refuse migrants before giving them the opportunity to seek asylum🇧🇷 The European Court of Human Rights in 2021 ruled that the pushback practices from bulgaria violated human rights🇧🇷 Many other organizations in recent years have reported reports of Bulgarian border police resorting to the use of dogs and pepper spray, as well as beatings and robberies. According to a recent report by Save The Children, there are also children among the victims of these violent methods.