Greek coastguard under scrutiny for response to mass drowning by migrants

ATHENS – Shortly after a rickety fishing boat carrying hundreds of smuggled migrants sank off a Greek Coast Guard vessel last week, Greek officials explained that they had not intervened because the smugglers did not want them to.

Intervening would also have been dangerous, said Coast Guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou, given that the ship was overcrowded and packed with migrants trying to reach Italy.

Trying to “forcefully stop the course” without co-operation from the crew or passengers could have caused a “maritime accident”, Mr Alexiou said. He added that although the ship was in Greece’s search and rescue zone, “you cannot intervene in international waters against a boat that is not involved in smuggling or any other crime.”

Mr. Alexiou apparently meant smuggling drugs or weapons, not people. But in the wake of Greece’s deadliest shipwreck in a decade, if not ever, which may have drowned more than 700 men, women and children from Syria, Pakistan and Egypt, the decision has been made not to act. expressed concern that an alignment of interests between smugglers who are paid to reach Italy and the Greek authorities who prefer the migrants to be Italy’s problem has led to an avoidable catastrophe.

“If the Greek Coast Guard recognized the boat as in distress, and this is an objective assessment, they should have tried to save it anyway,” said Markella Io Papadouli, a lawyer specializing in maritime law and human rights at the Greek Coast Guard. Opinion on Individual Rights in Europe Centre. She said no SOS call was needed, as the Greeks insisted. And while there were reports of distress calls being forwarded to the Greeks, she said it didn’t matter to focus on the call.

“Regardless of what the smugglers wanted,” or where the migrants hoped to go, she said, “you have a rescue duty” when a ship is in grave danger. “Negotiating with the smugglers is like negotiating with plane hijackers.”

Greek authorities came under more pressure on Monday as new allegations of negligence surfaced and stories from survivors began to trickle out, with descriptions of a hapless captain, engine trouble and even suggestions that the Greek coast guard had accidentally caused the sinking.

The Coast Guard disputed one BBC report showing that the trawler full of migrants did not move for seven hours on Tuesday. The Greek coastguard replied on Monday that the boat had traveled 30 nautical miles from its discovery Tuesday morning until it sank.

Greek officials are pointing the finger at the nine men currently under arrest. The suspected smugglers, they say, refused water to keep migrants thirsty, docile and in control.

But experts say Greek authorities also violated maritime law. A 2014 Law of the European Union “establishing rules for the surveillance of the external sea borders” is among the criteria for rescue “the existence of a request for assistance, although such a request will not be the only factor in establishing the existence of an emergency .”

The other factors for a rescue read like a description of last week’s shipwreck. Among the criteria: “The seaworthiness of the ship and the likelihood that the ship will not reach its final destination”, “The number of persons on board in relation to the type and condition of the ship” and “The availability of necessary supplies such as fuel, water and food to reach a shore.”

They also include: “the presence of qualified crew and command of the ship”, “the availability and suitability of safety, navigation and communication equipment”, “the presence on board of persons in need of urgent medical attention”, “the presence of deceased persons on board’ and ‘presence of pregnant women or children on board’.

By Monday, authorities had recovered 81 bodies and transferred most of the 104 survivors from a hospital in Kalamata, a port in southwest Greece, to a shelter north of Athens, where access is restricted.

In Pakistan, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday declared a day of mourning for the 104 Pakistanis who have already died locally, though officials expect the death toll to rise.

Many of the missing came from Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the region long disputed between India and Pakistan, and nearby Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province. said Mr Sharif on Sunday on Twitter that law enforcement agencies had been asked “to tighten the noose around individuals involved in the heinous act of human trafficking”.

United Nations officials have called for an investigation into what went wrong at sea.

The shipwreck came during a caretaker government in Greece ahead of elections on Sunday, blunting the political impact. Yet Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who is expected to be re-elected as prime minister according to polls, and whose crackdown on migrants has proved popular both at home and in the European Union, laid the blame squarely on the traffickers.

“As bewildered as we are, we should also be indignant at the wretched smugglers, at those scum,” he said on Saturday during his campaign in Gytheio in the southern Peloponnese.

But the Greek government’s bill has shifted in recent days. Initially, the Coast Guard denied ever attaching ropes to the fishing boat, which some survivors claimed was the cause of the shipwreck. Then the Coast Guard acknowledged that it briefly attached a rope to assess the condition of the boat and passengers, some of whom, according to survivors, were already dead from exposure and thirst.

The Greeks have said they wanted to stabilize the boat, while critics feared the Greeks might have tried to drag the migrants out of their jurisdiction.

An advocacy group for migrants, Alarm phone, said it had received calls as early as noon on Tuesday that the ship was in distress and had passed this information on to authorities. The Greeks say that in their communication with the ship during the day they were told that the ship was planning to sail to Italy.

The BBC also reported that a merchant vessel, the Lucky Sailor, had confirmed that it had changed course after being asked by the Greek Coast Guard to supply the trawler with food and water. According to court documents obtained by The New York Times, another ship, the Faithful Warrior, arrived about two and a half hours later and at 9:30 p.m. was supplying passengers with food and water. Migrants could be heard chanting “Italia, Italia”.

At 21:45, the Captain of the Faithful Warrior, Panagiotis Konstantinidis, reported to the Hellenic Search and Rescue Center’s control center that the trawler was “rocking dangerously” due to overcrowding on the decks. A few minutes later, passengers threw supplies into the sea.

According to the documents, a Coast Guard Vessel 920 official reported that the fishing boat stopped at 11:45 p.m. when, he said, the sailors threw a rope at it.

“There were voices in English — ‘No help, Go Italy’ — and despite repeated calls to ask them if they wanted help, they ignored us and around 11:57 p.m. they let go of the rope. They restarted the boat’s engine and headed west at low speed.”

According to the testimony of Mr. Konstantinidis, the control center dispatched his ship from his relief mission at 12:18 pm and ordered it to leave the area. A woman who answered the phone to the shipping company that owns the Greek freighter Faithful Warrior said the Coast Guard had told the company not to comment and to send the investigation to the Coast Guard.

“The coastguard still maintains that the boat was on course for Italy during these hours and did not require rescue,” the BBC reported.

In the court documents, the Coast Guard officer noted in neat and apparently unbroken handwriting on his deck log that at 1:40 a.m. the ship stopped moving again and the Coast Guard approached to assess the situation and prepare for the possibility of a rescue. But 26 minutes later, at 02:06, he reported that the ship “began to make a great inclination to the right side, and there was great commotion and shouting”.

“Within seconds the ship capsized, causing the people on the outer deck to fall into the sea and the ship to sink.”

Jason Horowitz and Niki Kitsantonis reported from Athens and Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels. Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting from Siena, Italy.