In confirmation of Al Jazeera Net's investigation... Egyptian survivors deny Greece's accusations of sinking a refugee boat

About 750 people were crowded into the boat that sank near the coast of Greece (Reuters)

Saeed (a pseudonym) cannot understand why he has been in Avlona Prison - a detention center northeast of the Greek capital, Athens - for many months.

“When someone asks me why you are in prison, I answer that I don’t know,” says the 21-year-old Egyptian.

“We are young, and we feel terrified. We are told that we will be sentenced to 400 years or a thousand years in prison. And every time they tell us that, we die.”

Saeed is one of 9 Egyptians in pretrial detention (they are the only ones detained in connection with the incident) accused of criminal responsibility for the sinking of a ship off the island of Pylos last year, which led to the death of hundreds of people who were trying to reach Europe.

“I will not leave unless I take my brother’s body.” An Egyptian accuses Greek rescue teams of sinking the refugee boat pic.twitter.com/3d8WdQcxCK

- Al Jazeera Egypt (@AJA_Egypt) June 17, 2023

The team is accused - under Greek law - of forming a criminal organization, facilitating illegal entry into the country, and causing a shipwreck.

For their part, Al Jazeera English correspondents, journalist Moira Lavia, who resides in Athens and specializes in immigration issues, and her colleague, Dat Ylar, said - in partnership with both Omnia Channel (a non-profit Greek channel and radio) and the Greek daily newspaper Ephemerida Ton Syntakton - that all nine defendants revealed to them that they had not They are among the smugglers who organized the trip or benefited from it.

On the other hand, the nine people said that they were just passengers who survived the sinking, and even accused the Greek Coast Guard of causing the overcrowded boat to capsize.

An investigative report by Al Jazeera Net - published approximately 72 hours after the boat was confirmed to have sunk - confirmed that the Greek Coast Guard asked the boat to follow it, and when the engine of the refugee boat broke down, the Coast Guard pulled it with a rope that was attached to the boat, which led to it swaying severely before it capsized and drowned most of its passengers. According to numerous testimonies from survivors, their relatives, and activists who communicated with the boat’s passengers via satellite, in addition to independent activists and international law experts who denied Greece’s story.

Al Jazeera Net investigation revealed the involvement of the Greek Coast Guard in sinking the boat (Al Jazeera)

Confession under threat

While speaking by phone from detention, the defendants told Al Jazeera reporters and their associates that Greek prosecutors had not taken their testimonies carefully and carefully, and that they had signed papers they did not understand under violent pressure or threats of violence.

For their part, two other survivors - apart from the nine accused - also said that the nine accused were not guilty, holding the Greek Coast Guard responsible.

Fearing retaliation from the Greek state, all 11 Al Jazeera sources asked to conceal their identities and use pseudonyms for this report.

The defendants - including parents, workers and students - said that they paid between 140 and 150 thousand Egyptian pounds (approximately 4,500 to 4,900 dollars) to a smuggler or intermediary to board the sunken boat.

“I will tell you what happened. I am a person who paid 140,000 Egyptian pounds,” says Magdy (a pseudonym), another defendant in the case.

“If I was the one putting these people on the boat, of course I had money - at least 7, 8, 9,000 euros... even 20,000 euros. Why would I agree to get on a boat like this?”

In 2022, a smuggler told the British newspaper The Guardian that he was charging Egyptians about 120,000 Egyptian pounds ($3,900). Recent press reports indicate that those migrating from Syria often pay about 6,000 euros (about 6,500 dollars) for such a trip.

Two other Syrian survivors said they paid the money to people, not including the nine Egyptian defendants, and added that the nine detainees did not participate in smuggling.

“No. They were not guilty of anything,” says Ahmed (a pseudonym for a Syrian survivor).

Who sank the boat?

On that bloody day, June 14, 2023, the ship carrying about 750 people capsized, including Egyptian, Syrian, Pakistani, Afghan and Palestinian migrants, including children and women. The dilapidated blue fishing boat had sailed from the coast of Libya 5 days before the sinking accident.

Only 84 bodies were recovered and 104 boat passengers rescued, meaning hundreds died in one of the worst refugee boat disasters ever recorded in the Mediterranean.

Rights groups, activists and some survivors say that Greek Coast Guard officials failed in their duty - under international law - to save lives at sea.

Ahmed (one of the survivors) said that he saw the nine defendants during the chaos when it seemed that the ship was about to capsize, and the passengers began to panic and run around.

“They were just directing people when our ship started to tilt... They were shouting at people trying to stabilize the tilting ship,” Ahmed adds.

Seven of the defendants stated that they saw a Greek Coast Guard patrol boat attach a rope to the ship before it sank, and Greek officers suddenly pulled the boat back once, then twice, causing the boat to capsize and sink, they say, in the Mediterranean Sea.

“I saw the Greek boat tied with a thick blue rope, one rope, to the middle of the boat,” said Fathi (a pseudonym for one of the accused men). “They pulled the boat, then it tilted to the side, and they saw it was tilting, and they continued pulling, so the boat was turned upside down.”

“A Greek boat dragged us and sank us, killed our brothers and friends, and now look at me in prison.”

Two of the defendants stated that they were detained and did not understand what had happened until after the disaster, when they were on board the Greek Coast Guard boat.

The two Syrian survivors told Al Jazeera that they saw the Greek Coast Guard towing the refugee boat.

For his part, Muhammad (a pseudonym) said about the nine detained Egyptians, “They had nothing to do with the sinking of the boat. This is clear.”

"You have to think logically. The sunken boat was a big boat and would not have sunk if no one had intervened. The engine was out of order but it could have stayed afloat. The Greek Coast Guard is actually responsible for the (intentional) sinking."

For its part, the Greek Coast Guard denied the accusations, saying it had “absolute respect for human life and human rights.”

“However, in cooperation with legal authorities and other relevant bodies, appropriate control mechanisms must be put in place where necessary,” he told Al Jazeera.

Greece's conflicting narratives

Initially, the Coast Guard did not mention any incident related to the rope in its official statements and spokesman Nikos Alexiou denied reports about the rope.

However, Alexiou later said that the two boats were “tied with ropes to prevent them from drifting,” and this came in a statement amid testimonies from survivors that belie Greece’s story.

Ongoing investigations at the Maritime Court of Kalamata (southern Greece) aim to determine whether the Greek Coast Guard performed search and rescue operations properly.

Meanwhile, a recent Frontex (European Border Agency) incident report on the boat sinking off the coast of Pylos stated that “Greek authorities failed to launch a timely search and rescue mission and deploy a sufficient number of appropriate assets in time to rescue the migrants.”

No date has been set for the start of the trial of the nine accused, although Greek law stipulates that it must begin within 18 months of their first arrest. If the accused men are convicted, they could face decades in prison.

“After I signed the papers, they beat me.”

Nine men say they gave their testimonies under pressure at Kalamata police station the day after the sinking; They were pressured to sign documents in Greek, which they said they could not understand.

Two said that police officers and translators present during interrogation beat or kicked them.

Saber (pseudonym) said that he was handed papers in Greek and expressed his unwillingness to sign them. He added, "He (the translator) told me that he would sign next to my signature. As if nothing had happened," and continued, "After I signed (the papers), he hit me."

Saber said he saw police kick another defendant in the chest.

The Greek police did not respond to requests for comment on these accusations.

"Criminalization of refugees"

Greece has long been accused by rights groups of accusing innocent people and victims of smuggling, and they have been sentenced by the country's local judicial authorities.

Dimitris Sholis, a defense lawyer who has spent years working on similar cases with the Samos Human Rights Legal Project, sees this incident as another example of the “criminalization of refugees.”

“We see the same behavior, the same unwillingness from the authorities to actually investigate what happened,” Sholis told Al Jazeera.

A 2021 report by the German border control charity found that there were at least 48 cases on the Greek islands of Chios and Lesbos alone of people serving prison sentences, stressing that they "did not benefit in any way from the smuggling operation."

Smuggling trials used to last only 20 minutes and resulted in 50-year prison sentences, Schulis said.

This is in line with reports from watchdog groups such as Border Line Europe that say smuggling trials in Greece are being rushed and “sentencing is made on the basis of limited and questionable evidence”.

For its part, the Lesbos Legal Centre, which is also working to defend the nine Egyptians, complained of a severe lack of evidence, saying that the investigation file relied “almost exclusively” on a small number of testimonies taken in “questionable circumstances.”

Additionally, Al Jazeera reviewed leaked documents from the court case, including a complaint by defense lawyers that an expert report written by a naval engineer and a marine mechanical engineer - reported as part of the investigation - used scant evidence: 3 photos, 2 videos, and 1 email. The report did not take into account the ship's capsizing and sinking, as the complaint claimed.

The defense also questioned the impartiality of the experts appointed and stated that procedures regarding how the defendants were notified of the expert's report had not been followed.

“I strongly believe that the Greek Coast Guard caused the sinking,” Cholis said, adding that “the Greek Coast Guard conducted all the preliminary investigation in this case, and they ordered the marine engineer to conduct the analysis. I think the problem is clear here.”

Four of the accused men said they offered water to people sitting next to them, and Schullis explains that in previous smuggling cases, offering water was considered smuggling.

“We have seen the authorities charge people, and in Pylos as well, based on actions like offering water, distributing food, having a phone, taking videos, looking at the GPS, calling the authorities, attaching a rope to tow their boat to be rescued... etc".

Jamal (one of the nine accused) cannot understand how offering someone water is considered smuggling.

“Of course, if you have a bottle of water in your hand and someone next to you is dying of thirst, wouldn’t you give them water?” Speaking from prison, he added, “No, but here, this is considered human smuggling.”

Source: Al Jazeera