Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 28th of June 2018

Case name: 2018_06_28-AEG400
Situation: Distress situation at Evros land border
Status of WTM Investigation: Open
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Thursday, the 28th of June 2018, at 10.56pm, our Alarm Phone shift team received a message from a contact person, alerting us to a group of travellers in distress at the Turkish-Greek land border and indicating that there were children and elderly people among the group. We were able to establish contact to them and they informed us at 11.30pm that they were 9 people, 5 men, 3 women, and a child. They informed us, in Arabic, that they had been walking for three days and were exhausted. They had also run out of food. At 11.51pm, they asked us to alert authorities to their situation. We informed the UNHCR Greece at 00.19am and at 00.25am the closest police station. The police officer referred us to another police station where nobody, however, could understand English. Later we found someone who said that they would go search for them.

At 1.27am, we received an update from the group, saying that they had not yet been found. We passed their GPS position to the police once more at 1.32am. They advised us to ask the group to move to the nearest village. At 2.24am the group sent us an updated GPS position and told us that they were in a church at a graveyard. Ten minutes later we informed the police about their location. For several hours afterwards, we could not confirm whether or not the police had found the group. At 8.33am, the police informed us that units from another police station had found the people – we were, however, unable to reach that station. At 2.45pm, the police station informed us that the people had been arrested. They refused to relate further information to us. Over several days we tried to re-establish contact with the travellers but were unsuccessful.