Greek coastguard threw migrants overboard to their deaths, witnesses say

The Greek coastguard has triggered the deaths of dozens of migrants within the Mediterranean over a three-year interval, witnesses say, together with 9 who have been intentionally thrown into the water.

The 9 are amongst greater than 40 individuals alleged to have died because of being compelled out of Greek territorial waters, or taken again out to sea after reaching Greek islands, BBC evaluation has discovered.

The Greek coastguard advised our investigation it strongly rejects all accusations of unlawful actions.

We confirmed footage of 12 individuals being loaded right into a Greek coastguard boat, after which deserted on a dinghy, to a former senior Greek coastguard officer. When he acquired up from his chair, and together with his mic nonetheless on, he stated it was “obviously illegal” and “an international crime”.

The Greek authorities has lengthy been accused of compelled returns – pushing individuals again in direction of Turkey, the place they’ve crossed from, which is against the law below worldwide regulation.

However that is the primary time the BBC has calculated the variety of incidents which allege that fatalities occurred because of the Greek coastguard’s actions.

The 15 incidents we analysed – dated Might 2020-23 – resulted in 43 deaths. The preliminary sources have been primarily native media, NGOs and the Turkish coastguard.

Verifying such accounts is extraordinarily troublesome – witnesses typically disappear, or are too fearful to talk out. However in 4 of those instances we have been capable of corroborate accounts by talking with eye witnesses.

Our analysis, which options in a brand new BBC documentary, Useless Calm: Killing within the Med?, steered a transparent sample.

In 5 of the incidents, migrants stated they have been thrown straight into the ocean by the Greek authorities. In 4 of these instances they defined how they’d landed on Greek islands however have been hunted down. In a number of different incidents, migrants stated they’d been put onto inflatable rafts with out motors which then deflated, or appeared to have been punctured.

Probably the most chilling accounts was given by a Cameroonian man, who says he was hunted by Greek authorities after touchdown on the island of Samos in September 2021.

Like all of the individuals we interviewed, he stated he was planning to register on Greek soil as an asylum seeker.

“We had barely docked, and the police came from behind,” he advised us. “There were two policemen dressed in black, and three others in civilian clothes. They were masked, you could only see their eyes.”

He and two others – one other from Cameroon and a person from Ivory Coast – have been transferred to a Greek coastguard boat, he stated, the place occasions took a terrifying flip.

“They started with the [other] Cameroonian. They threw him in the water. The Ivorian man said: ‘Save me, I don’t want to die… and then eventually only his hand was above water, and his body was below.

“Slowly his hand slipped under, and the water engulfed him.”

Our interviewee says his abductors beat him.

“Punches were raining down on my head. It was like they were punching an animal.” And then he says they pushed him, too, into the water – without a life jacket. He was able to swim to shore, but the bodies of the other two – Sidy Keita and Didier Martial Kouamou Nana – were recovered on the Turkish coastline.

The survivor’s lawyers are demanding the Greek authorities open a double murder case.

Dead Calm: Killing in the Med?

In June 2023, an overloaded trawler flips in front of a Greek coast guard patrol boat. More than 600 men, women and children die in the water. But who is responsible, and are the coast guard at fault?

Watch on iPlayer or on BBC Two at 21:00 on Monday 17 June.

Another man, from Somalia, told the BBC how in March 2021 he had been caught by the Greek army on arrival on the island of Chios, who then handed him to the Greek coastguard.

He said the coastguard had tied his hands behind his back, before dropping him into the water.

“They threw me zip-tied in the middle of the sea. They wanted me to die,” he said.

He said he managed to survive by floating on his back, before one of his hands broke free from the ligature. But the sea was choppy, and three in his group died. Our interviewee made it to land where he was eventually spotted by the Turkish coastguard.

In the incident with the highest loss of life – in September 2022 – a boat carrying 85 migrants ran into trouble near the Greek island of Rhodes when its motor cut out.

Mohamed, from Syria, told us they rang the Greek coastguard for help – who loaded them onto a boat, returned them to Turkish waters and put them in life rafts. Mohamed says the raft he and his family were given had not had its valve properly closed.

“We immediately began to sink, they saw that… They heard us all screaming, and yet they still left us,” he told the BBC.

“The first child who died was my cousin’s son… After that it was one by one. Another child, another child, then my cousin himself disappeared. By the morning seven or eight children had died.

“My kids didn’t die until the morning… right before the Turkish coastguard arrived.”

Greek law allows all migrants seeking asylum to register their claim on several of the islands at special registration centres.

But our interviewees – who we contacted with the help of migrant support body Consolidated Rescue Group – said they were apprehended before they could get to these centres. They said these men would be apparently operating undercover – non-uniformed, and often masked.

Human rights groups allege thousands of people seeking asylum in Europe have been illegally forced back from Greece to Turkey and denied the right to seek asylum, which is enshrined in international and EU law.

Austrian activist Fayad Mulla told us he discovered for himself how secretive such operations seem to be in February last year, on the Greek island of Lesbos.

Driving towards the location of an alleged forced return after a tip-off, he was stopped by a man in a hoodie – who was later revealed to work for the police. He said the police then attempted to delete the footage of him being stopped from his dashcam and charge him with resisting a police officer.

Ultimately, no further action was taken.

Two months later, in a similar place, Mr Mulla managed to film a forced return, published by The New York Times.

A group which included women and babies was unloaded from the back of an unmarked van and marched down a jetty onto a small boat.

They were then transferred onto a Greek coastguard vessel further away from the coastline, taken out to sea, and then put onto a raft where they were left to drift.

We showed this footage – which the BBC has verified – to Dimitris Baltakos, the former head of special operations with the Greek coastguard.

During the interview, he refused to speculate about what the footage showed – having denied, earlier in our conversation, that the Greek coastguard would ever be required to do anything illegal. But during a break, he was recorded telling someone out of shot in Greek:

“I haven’t told them much, right? It’s very clear, isn’t it. It’s not nuclear physics. I don’t know why they did it in broad daylight… It’s… obviously illegal. It’s an international crime.”

Greece’s Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Insular Coverage advised the BBC the footage is at present being investigated by the nation’s impartial Nationwide Transparency Authority.

An investigative journalist we spoke to primarily based on the island of Samos says she started chatting with a member of the Greek particular forces through the courting app Tinder.

When he rang her from what he described as a “warship”, Romy van Baarsen requested him extra about his work – and what occurred when his forces noticed a refugee boat.

He replied that they “drive them back”, and stated such orders have been “from the minister”, including they’d be punished in the event that they did not cease a ship.

Greece has all the time denied so-called “pushbacks” are happening.

Greece is an entryway into Europe for a lot of migrants. Final yr, there have been 263,048 sea arrivals in Europe, with Greece receiving 41,561 (16%) of these. Turkey signed a take care of the EU in 2016 to cease migrants and refugees crossing into Greece, however stated in 2020 it may now not implement it.

We put the findings in our investigation to the Greek coastguard. It replied that its employees labored “tirelessly with the utmost professionalism, a strong sense of responsibility and respect for human life and fundamental rights”, including that they have been “in full compliance with the country’s international obligations”.

It added: “It should be highlighted that from 2015 to 2024, the Hellenic Coast Guard has rescued 250,834 refugees/migrants in 6,161 incidents at sea. The impeccable execution of this noble mission has been positively recognized by the international community.”

The Greek coastguard has beforehand been criticised for its function within the greatest migrant shipwreck within the Mediterranean for a decade. Greater than 600 individuals are feared to have died after the Adriana sank in Greece’s demarcated rescue space final June.

Greek officers have insisted the boat was not in hassle and was safely on its solution to Italy, and so the coastguard didn’t try a rescue.