Watch
The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 24th of March 2021
Case
name: 20210324-AEG755
Situation:
Three men lost near the Evros river in Greece, border guards and
police beat them up and steal they belongings, push back to Turkey.
One of them gives a testimony.

Status
of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place
of Incident: Aegean Sea
Summary
of the case:

On the 24th of March 2021 at 15:51h CET, the Alarm Phone was called by a lady.
She reported about three friends of hers who had crossed the border
from Turkey to Greece. Shortly before her call, they had been
discovered by the police on Greece territory
and the contact to them had broken off. She reported that the last
phone call with them had been „horrible“, the person on the phone
had been crying, and there had been shouting in the background. The
travelers had been hiding in the forest for four days. Since the
contact was cut, she was worried. She passed us their last GPS
location which was close to the Evros river, north of Soufli. We
asked her to transfer us the names and phone numbers of the people.
At 16:55h CET, we reached one of the phone number we had received. It
turned out, we talked to the brother of one of the three men at the
border. At 17:36h CET, we received their names from the brother. At
20:10h CET, we received a call from a third person who was in touch
with the same group. At 22:10h CET, we spoke to the sister of this
person. She had spoken to her brother and learned that the police had
beaten them very hardly and stolen their belongings. Before that,
they had tried to return to Turkey on their own, but the Turkish
military had shot at them at the border. In the end, they had been
pushed back to Turkey.

On
the 26th,
we got in touch with one of the travelers and received his testimony
of the happenings:

They had been promised wrong facts and had been left alone in the middle
of the forest at the border. As they did not have orientation and
were afraid of the border controls, they remained hiding and wanted
to return to Turkey. On the water, when they tried to cross the river
back to Turkey in a boat they had found and fixed, the Turkish border
control fired warning shots at them and shouted they should go back.
They denied them help and entry. The travelers had to remain at the
border for three more days without food and only drinking the water
from the river. Then, they were found by masked men. They pretended
to be friendly to the travelers, but confiscated all their belongings
and made them enter in a car, telling them that nobody would harm
them. They brought them to a police station, where they were being
beaten several times and imprisoned. From there, again, they were
brought to another place, they did not get back their belongings, but
even their clothes were taken away from them, and they were moved
across the river back to Turkey, while the involved border guards did
not even spare the women or children from very bad treatment.