According to a BBC investigation, the Greek coastguard has been accused of causing the deaths of dozens of migrants in the Mediterranean over three years, with witnesses claiming that nine individuals were deliberately thrown overboard. The investigation found that more than 40 people are alleged to have died as a result of being forced out of Greek territorial waters or taken back out to sea after reaching Greek islands.
The Greek coastguard strongly refuted all accusations of illegal activities.
Footage shows 12 people being loaded onto a Greek coastguard boat and then abandoned on a dinghy by a former senior Greek coastguard officer. After initially refusing to speculate, Dimitris Baltakos, the former head of special operations with the Greek coastguard, was caught on a hot mic saying, "It's obviously illegal" and "an international crime."
The Greek government has long faced accusations of forced returns – illegally pushing migrants back towards Turkey, from where they crossed. However, the BBC's investigation is the first to calculate the number of incidents in which fatalities are alleged to have occurred due to the Greek coastguard's actions.
Bravo🇬🇷🇬🇷🇬🇷👏👏👏
Greek Coastguard ( take note UK Border Force/RNLI ) PUSHING ILLEGAL MIGRANTS BACK INTO TURKISH WATERS!!!
Greeks can do it...
The UK Border Force/RNLI would rather go into French waters and help them come here!!! pic.twitter.com/6zcXZP1c07
— 'Seeing is believing' (@dave24144975) October 8, 2023
One of the most chilling accounts came from a Cameroonian man who said he was hunted down by Greek authorities after landing on the island of Samos in September 2021. The man claimed that after being transferred to a Greek coastguard boat, his two companions – another Cameroonian and a man from Ivory Coast – were thrown overboard.
"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," the Cameroonian man said. "Slowly his hand slipped under, and the water engulfed him." The Cameroonian man said he was also beaten and pushed into the water without a life jacket, but managed to swim to shore. The bodies of the other two, identified as Sidy Keita and Didier Martial Kouamou Nana, were recovered on the Turkish coastline.
Another man from Somalia told the BBC that in March 2021, after being caught by the Greek army on the island of Chios and handed over to the Greek coastguard, he was tied up and dropped into the water. "They threw me zip-tied in the middle of the sea. They wanted me to die," he said.
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. A Syrian man named Mohamed explained that after calling the Greek coastguard for help, they were loaded onto a boat, returned to Turkish waters, and put on life rafts, one without its valve properly closed. "We immediately began to sink, they saw that… They heard us all screaming, and yet they still left us," Mohamed said. "The first child who died was my cousin's son… After that, it was one by one. Another child, another child, and then my cousin himself disappeared. By the morning seven or eight children had died."
Human rights groups allege that thousands of asylum seekers have been illegally forced back from Greece to Turkey, denying them the right to seek asylum enshrined in international and EU law. The BBC's interviewees claimed they were apprehended before they could register their claims, often by non-uniformed and masked individuals.
Austrian activist Fayad Mulla told the BBC that in February 2023, on the Greek island of Lesbos, he was stopped by an undercover police officer while attempting to approach the location of an alleged forced return. Mulla said the police tried to delete footage from his dashcam and charge him with resisting a police officer but ultimately took no further action.
Two months later, Mulla managed to film a forced return, published by The New York Times, showing a group including women and babies being marched onto a small boat, transferred to a Greek coastguard vessel, and then left on a raft to drift. The Greek Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy informed the BBC that the footage is currently under investigation by the country's independent National Transparency Authority.
Greek coastguard 'threw migrants overboard to their deaths, dumped others in the sea on punctured boats and caused the deaths of dozens of people in the Mediterranean'. https://t.co/JKLedH8ONg
— Paula London 🇬🇧 (@misspaulalondon) June 17, 2024
The Greek coastguard stated that its staff worked "tirelessly with the utmost professionalism, a strong sense of responsibility and respect for human life and fundamental rights," adding that they were "in full compliance with the country's international obligations." The coastguard also highlighted that from 2015 to 2024, it had rescued 250,834 refugees and migrants in 6,161 incidents at sea, with its "impeccable execution of this noble mission" being "positively recognized by the international community."
The Greek coastguard has previously faced criticism for its role in the largest migrant shipwreck in the Mediterranean in a decade, when more than 600 people are feared to have died after the Adriana sank in Greece's designated rescue area last June.
