NEW INVESTIGATIONS CONTRADICT GREEK COASTGUARD ACCOUNTS OF MIGRANT TRAGEDIES

Tue 11 July 2023:

A new investigation by the Guardian and others has found that attempts by the Greek coastguard in June to tow a boat carrying roughly 750 refugees which capsized leaving only 104 survivors may have caused the vessel to sink.

Most of the passengers were from Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Pakistan. Nine of the survivors have been arrested on charges of involuntary manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and migrant smuggling and have denied the charges.

On 14 June the fishing trawler left Egypt, picked up passengers in Libya, and then tried to sail to Italy before sinking off the coast of Greece.

At the end of June, survivors told Greek judicial officials that the coastguard made a disastrous attempt to tow the overloaded trawler and one even shouted at the coastguard to stop the vessel after it began to pick up speed after attaching the rope.

The survivor, who is from Syria, said the boat tilted to the left and then the right, before turning upside down. One survivor also told Reuters at the end of June:

They quickly pulled us, and the boat capsized. It moved to the right, to the left, to the right and it capsized. People started to fall on each other. People were on top of each other, people were screaming, people were drowning each other. It was night time and there were waves. It was scary.

The coastguard and the government said they made no attempt to tow the boat and that the coastguard was roughly 70 metres away when it overturned.

The Guardian’s investigation, which it did in collaboration with Forensis, the German public broadcaster ARD/NDR/Funk and Greek investigative outlet Solomon, revealed other failings, including that a coastguard boat was moored at a closer port but wasn’t dispatched.

Greek authorities failed to respond three times to Frontex who offered to assist, whilst the coastguard vessel did not record the operation on its thermal cameras.

The investigation showed that the trawler started moving to the west after meeting the Greek coastguard vessel and that the coastguard said it would take them to Italy.

One survivor told the Guardian that people shouted about a rope being attached to the boat and described being towed for ten minutes, adding: “I feel that they have tried to push us out of Greek water so that their responsibility ends.”

Two coastguard sources added that they believed it was towing the boat that caused it to capsize.

Court documents revealed that seven out of eight survivors told the civil prosecutors that they felt a strong pull.