Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 21st of March 2017

Case name: 2017_03_21-AEG283
Situation: Boat intercepted on its way to Chios
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: In the night from Monday to Tuesday, a contact person informed us about a 35 travellers who had attempted to reach Chios from Turkey on a rubber boat and who had been attacked and intercepted by the Turkish Coastguard. All travellers had been taken on board of the coastguard vessel. The contact person forwarded us a voice message by one of the travellers, who explained what had happened:
"We reached the Territorial Water of Greece. The ship and two boats followed us. They damaged the boat and the motor. We felt down in the water and we drowned. They have just picked us up and now we are arrested in the ship."
Later on Tuesday morning, we tried to reach the travellers, but both numbers we had were not available. At 11.43am we finally reached one of the travellers. They were in a police station. Later in the afternoon, we reached them again and they told us exactly what had happened:
The travellers had been about 500m away from Greek territorial waters when 5 boats of the Turkish coastguard stopped them by throwing ropes on their boat and finally by blocking their way. The travellers were then taken on board of one of the coastguard ships, which brought them to a harbour, where their fingerprints were taken. After waiting for more than 4 hours they were sent to the police station. From there, they were transferred to the centre of Izmir. Three pregnant women who were amongst the travellers were brought to a hospital, where one received immediate treatment (she was already in the 9th month of her pregnancy). We brought them in contact with refugee support NGOs in Izmir.