Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 17th of July 2021

Case name: 20210624-AEG794

Situation: 9 travellers in distress were pushbacked to Turkey with 16 other people

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case:

On the 17th of July at 01:51 CEST we received information from a relative about a boat in distress north of Kos, water was entering the boat. The relative had lost contact to the boat at 00:30. We tried to reach the boat every five minutes and meanwhile alerted the Greek Coastguard about the case. At 2:37 the relative told us that the people on the boat are now with the Greek Coastguard and afraid of pushback. We called the Greek Coastguard every hour to ask for information about the rescue, but they kept telling that they are still searching for the boat.

At 7:30 in the morning the Greek Coastguard told us that they saw two boats near Kos Island with about 20 people each. They said that they saw the boats when they were patrolling the borderline between Greek and Turkish waters. They claimed that the boats were in Turkish waters and the Turkish CG was nearby, while the Greek waters were free of boats.

The Turkish CG confirmed rescues on that day in that area, but not with 9 people. On the 18th of July we called the Turkish CG again. The officer said that they cannot tell how many people were on which boat, because they rescued 25 from different boats that had already been in Greece and were then pushbacked by the Greek Coastguard in one boat with 25 people all together.We couldn't establish contact with the people on the boat to confirm the information, but we assume that the 9 people were part of the group in that boat.

https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1416202531039064066