Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 9th of November 2019

Case name: 2019_09_11-AEG616
Situation: Elderly women and children got lost in Evros region, Greece and were returned to Edirne, Turkey
Status of WTM Investigation: investigation ongoing
Place of Incident: Aegean region, Evros region

Summary of the Case:
On 9 November our shiftteam was contacted at 13:46h CET for an elderly woman with a boy which both had lost the group they were travelling with. The Alarm Phone talked to the woman at 14:20h and gathered information about the situation: They were near a mosque in the village of Mega Dereio in the Evros region in Greece, already 32 km from the turkish-greek border and they had stayed there since two days. They alerted the Greek police and were informed that they will be picked up later in the evening. At 16:40h various authorities plus NGOs in Greece were informed by Alarm Phone. Unfortunately our shift team lost contact to the travellers. During the evening the shift team reached out to various authorities in the region to find out what happened to the two people. When the Regional Centre for Integrated Border Management and Immigration were called the Alarm Phone learned that obviously no police were informed yet. The centre adviced to call the police in Orestiada which was done at 22:13h. The officers told to the Alarm Phone that they will handle the case now, but stated at 00:39h that they didn't found the travellers at the village. The next day at 14:11h CET our team learned that the woman and the child were back in Greece. We are still investigating how this push-back took place.