Greece says it will not dump migrants at sea It was caught in the act.
The Greek government did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But during his campaign in Lesvos last week ahead of Sunday’s general election, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis defended his government’s “tough but fair” migration policy and boasted of a 90 percent drop in the arrival of “illegal migrants”.
The government has consistently denied mistreating asylum seekers, pointing out that it is taking on a disproportionate burden of managing new arrivals in Europe.
But the video, made by an Austrian aid worker, Fayad Mulla, who has spent most of the past two and a half years working on the island trying to document abuses against migrants, is perhaps the most damning evidence yet of the Greek authorities. violation of international laws and EU rules governing how asylum seekers should be treated.
In addition to interviewing the asylum seekers in Turkey, The Times verified the footage by conducting a frame-by-frame analysis to identify the people in the video, geolocate key events and confirm the time and day using maritime traffic data , as well as an analysis of the position of the sun and visible shadows.
We personally showed the video to three senior European Commission officials in Brussels, describing how we verified it. Later, in written submissions, the Commission said it was “concerned about the footage” and, although it had not verified the material itself, it would take up the matter with the Greek authorities.
Greece “must fully comply with its obligations under EU asylum rules and international law, including ensuring access to the asylum procedure,” said Anitta Hipper, the European Commission’s spokeswoman for migration.
The Greek authorities refused requests to meet in person to view the video.
Greece and the European Union have hardened their attitude towards migrants following the arrival in 2015 and 2016 of more than a million refugees from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. The wave of new arrivals reshaped European politics, fueling populist hard-right forces that played on nativist fears.
Greece is far from alone in cracking down on migrants. Poland, Italy and Lithuania recently changed their laws to make it easier to repel migrants and punish those who help them.
But the new videos suggest that Greek authorities have gone even further, resorting to covert extrajudicial evictions that sweep up even the most vulnerable with the cooperation of their naval forces.
“By the will of God, we managed to survive,” Ms Aden said.
Anatomy of an extrajudicial deportation
It was just after noon on April 11 that a white, unmarked van drove up to a small cove with a wooden jetty at the southern tip of Lesvos, according to video from Mr. mulla.
As the van snaked toward shore, two men waiting in a speedboat covered their faces with what appeared to be ski masks. When the van stopped, three men emerged, unlocked the back doors – and 12 people came out, including several small children.
The passengers included Ms Aden and her baby, Awale, with whom she originally fled Jilib, a small town in an area of Somalia controlled by Al Shabab, a militant group linked to Al Qaeda, she said. Ms Aden said they landed on Lesvos a day earlier in a smuggler’s boat and spent the night in the bushes before being apprehended by masked men.
Sulekha Abdullahi, 40, and her six children were also crammed into the van.
As did Mahdi, 25, and Miliyen, 33, who said they also arrived on Lesvos by dinghy and took cover in the undergrowth. They were captured after a brief chase, and Miliyen’s ankles were still deeply scratched when we interviewed him days later.
They agreed to share their stories, but asked to be identified by their first name only, fearing retaliation.
A few minutes after the group was escorted from the van, everyone was taken to the Aegean waters in the speedboat. From a distance it looked like a tourist leisure ride. It was anything but.