Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 15th of October 2020
Case name: 2019_10_15-AEG713
Situation: 16 people on an island on the Greek side of the Evros river pushed back to Turkey
Status of WTM Investigation: Ongoing
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea / Landborder Turkey/Greece


Summary of the Case:
In the early morning hours of 15 October, we were contacted by about 16 people who were stranded on an island in the the aritsa/Evros
river. We were sent co-odinates for their location which indicated that they were on a part of the river that runs along the border
between Turkey and Greece, on an island located on the Greek side of the border. We were told that the group included women and
children. The group informed us that they had been brought there by Greek police, after they had feld from Turkey to Greece. We were told that they had already been on this island for two days.

The last contact with them had been on 13 October. We were told that someone had managed to escape from the island on 14 October and reached Istanbul, and at that point informed others about those on the island. According to his testimony those on the island had been shot at by Greek authorities. 

We repeatedly attempted to make direct contact with those stranded on the island but with no success. Between 02:35h and 02:45h we tried to phone various numbers for the local Greek police station in Orestiada but there was no response to our repeated calls to any of these numbers at this point. We also emailed them to pass on the information. At 02:50h we emailed UNHCR Greece with the full names we had been given of some of the people stranded on island.

At 03:05h we were able to get through to a police officer who wrote down the position and told us that they would send a patrol. We then subsequently tried to call the Turkish border police between 03:20h and 06:55h as well, because we were not sure if the small islet belonged to the Greek or the Turkish side, but did not get any response. 

At 07:23h we were sent further information about those stranded. We were told they were all from Syria and those whose ages we were
given were between 13-42 years old. 

At 07:43h we received a call informing us that the stranded people had been taken to Istanbul and at 08:16h the initial caller
confirmed this information.