Frontex, the European border agency’s Fundamental Rights Office, has in its reports blamed the Greek coast guard for the deaths of four migrants who were thrown into the Aegean Sea with their hands tied from one of its boats in two separate pushback incidents in 2022.
The first of these is recorded in a report from this Frontex office, dated March 31, 2023, and refers to three of the victims. They were part of a group of migrants who had landed on August 6, 2022, on the Greek island of Chios. There, several were seized by local residents with the intention of handing them over to the authorities. After the call from the neighbors, instead of uniformed officers appearing on the scene, 10 hooded and armed men showed up and forced 11 of the migrants to board a boat operated by the Coast Guard, which set sail for Turkish territorial waters. Upon reaching the territorial limit, “they were pushed into the water, including, allegedly, those who were handcuffed. Eight managed to swim to the shore,” describes the report from the Frontex Fundamental Rights Office (FRO). The office describes as “credible and probable” the pushback of the 11 migrants to Turkish waters, where they were “abandoned by the Greek Coast Guard, leading to the death of three migrants.”
The survivors reached a beach on Karaada, an islet in Turkey, where they were rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard two days later, while the remaining three drowned, according to another report on the incident. pushbacks (hot returns) prepared by Turkish agents. In it they explain that the survivors were four Eritrean men and four Yemenis, and that they also recovered the three bodies from the sea.
The case of the fourth victim is included in another file with the same date, March 31, 2023, in which the Fundamental Rights Office recounts a similar incident in which a group of seven migrants was also seized by armed and masked men, this time on September 1, 2022, on the island of Samos. They were robbed of their phones and all their money, and tortured “including with firearms.” They were then “allegedly” forced onto a Coast Guard vessel and taken to Turkish territorial waters, where they were forced to jump into the water. The dossier cites the testimonies of the survivors, who claim that they were not provided with a raft “or any other type of floating device, and only two of them had life jackets.” One drowned, and the remaining six were rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard two days later.
Both documents were made available to the public by Frontex following a request for public access by a private individual. But the collaboration of the Greek coastguard with hooded and armed men when carrying out illegal collective expulsions is also recorded in two other internal reports by the FRO, to which Morning Express has had access, which have not been published until now. Every three months, the head of fundamental rights prepares a file for the Agency’s management.
The report, which covers the period from 1 February to 30 April 2023, states that in Greece there were “cases of ill-treatment by both masked men and local groups of citizens, including confiscation of personal belongings and body searches”. The report notes “an increase in the level of violence used” and “a lack of effective investigations” by Greek institutions. All of this is in the context of pushbacks, which the FRO defines as “collective expulsions of third-country nationals attempting to cross borders, including illegal pushbacks of Turkish nationals and vulnerable people”.
Knowing what’s happening outside means understanding what’s going to happen inside, so don’t miss anything.
KEEP READING
The dossier for the following quarter, covering the period from 1 May to 31 July 2023, is even more categorical: it considers that the hooded individuals carrying out the collective expulsions to Turkish waters are “affiliated with the national authorities” because the returns were “coordinated, had sufficient resources and appeared to be carried out systematically, rather than being isolated incidents”.
Complaint against Frontex
The quarterly reports are part of a complaint against Frontex at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), lodged by a survivor of the incident in Samos, through the legal NGO Front-lex. The complaint is pending appeal after the court refused to admit it.
The complainant is a Congolese citizen residing in Turkey, having been expelled from Greece twice while trying to migrate to Europe. The second pushback he suffered was the one that occurred in Samos on September 1, 2022 and the man who drowned was his best friend. The case, known as Front-lex vs Frontexis directed against the European border agency for continuing its operations in Greece despite reports that the Greek coastguard violates fundamental rights. In addition to the two incidents cited, the complaint describes other similar events, but without death. The NGO’s complaint seeks to demonstrate that Greece would not be able to carry out collective expulsions systematically without the cooperation of Frontex.
The complaint was filed in October 2022. In November 2023, the CJEU dismissed it at first instance on the grounds of inadmissibility. In other words, the court rejected the applicant’s standing to sue Frontex from Turkey, without considering the merits of the complaint. In January 2024, the lawyer who prepared the complaint, Iftach Cohen, filed an appeal that has not yet been resolved.
Cohen believes that Frontex should have withdrawn its assets from Greece, under Article 46 of the Fundamental Rights Strategy The Greek Coast Guard has adopted a law that establishes that the executive director will agree to cease operations when he considers that they violate basic rights or international obligations, after consulting with the person responsible for fundamental rights. The lawyer argues that the Greek coast guard’s operations “cannot be separated from Frontex” because the agency, in addition to financing the vessels with which they are carried out, “coordinates and provides technical information” to the coast guard to intercept refugee boats. “Greece needs the presumption of legality that Frontex grants it to continue carrying out mass expulsions,” says Cohen. “The argument of the Greek coast guard is always ‘we acted legally because Frontex was there with us,'” says the lawyer. The Greek Coast Guard spokeswoman has not responded to this newspaper’s questions regarding the incidents and the reports cited.
Frontex spokesman Krzysztof Borowski told Morning Express that, although its director, Hans Leijtens, believes that a continuous evaluation of the cases reported by the FRO is necessary to determine “the credibility of the cooperation between the agency and Greece,” he has not reached the conclusion that operations should cease. “Our role is not only to support and work with member states to ensure respect for human rights while protecting borders,” Borowski explained by phone. “We are committed to ensuring that all our operations in Greece are carried out in full compliance with the law and with respect for the dignity of all people. The possibility of withdrawing our support is the last option and we will not take it lightly.”
Follow all the international information at Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.
.
.
_