In a lengthy article, the BBC reports that the Greek coastguard has caused the deaths of dozens of migrants in the Mediterranean over the past 3 years by throwing them overboard.
Some of the migrants were deliberately thrown into the sea by the coast guard, while others were left there or were not rescued after being forcibly expelled from Greek territorial waters.
The BBC bases its analysis on footage and eyewitness accounts.
On the other hand, the Greek Coast Guard has strongly denied these accusations of illegal actions on their part.
The BBC analyzed 15 incidents between 2020 and 2023, which resulted in 43 deaths. The BBC says the initial sources of their investigation were local media, denunciations from organizations and the Turkish coast guard.
Greek authorities have often been accused of forcibly returning migrants, pushing them towards Turkey.
In 5 of the incidents investigated by the BBC, migrants said they were thrown into the sea by Greek authorities. In 4 of the cases, the surviving migrants explained how they had landed on the Greek islands but were neutralized by the Greek coast guard.
In other cases, migrants said they were forced into dinghies without engines and left at sea, which later deflated or appeared to have cracked.
A man from Cameroon has told the BBC about a serious case. As soon as they arrived on Greek soil, police dressed in black and masks appeared among the migrants. He says that together with two other people, one from Cameroon and one from Ivory Coast, they beat them and threw them into the sea, where they drowned.
The witness himself who spoke to the BBC was also raped and thrown into the sea.
“They beat me as if I were an animal,” he says. He was then pushed into the water without a life jacket, but he was able to swim to shore. The bodies of two other people who were raped were found by the Turkish Coast Guard in their territory.
On the other hand, from 2015 to 2024, the Greek Coast Guard rescued 250,834 refugees in 6161 cases of incidents at sea.
