Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 23nd of March 2018

Case name: 2018_23_03-AEG353
Situation: 10 travellers stuck at Turkish - Greek land border, detained in Greece
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Greece - Turkey land border

Summary of the Case:

On Friday, 23rd of March, at 3:22pm CET, we were contacted about a group of 10 persons, among them one child, that had been stuck on a small island on Evros river since the morning. At 3:39pm we called the group. The water was rising and they requested urgent assistance. We received their GPS position shortly after. We hence tried to reach both Greek and Turkish local authorities to request assistance and also alerted the UNHCR via E-mail. At 4:24pm we reached the Turkish police in Uzunköprü that promised to sent a team. We couldn’t establish connection to the people any more. We also tried several times to contact the local authorities again, but couldn’t reach anyone, neither in the next morning. Only at 1:45pm we reached Uzunköprü Police, but they hadn’t found the people yet. At 5pm we called again and they stated they would still be looking for the group. At 9:30pm we reached the contact person that in the meantime had contact to the travellers. They had told him that the Coast Guard was approaching them. We called the Greek Coast Guard and shared our information, also via E-Mail. At 10:22pm we also called the nearest Greek Police station in Kipoi and passed our information. We also called the Coast Guard in Piraeus again that said they had forwarded all respective information to local authorities. At 11:30am the next day the Kipoi Police confirmed that they had found the group, consisting of 9 adults and one minor, and had brought them to a detention center.