In three annual reports since 2022, Greece’s Mechanism for Recording Incidents of Informal Returns, which operates under the supervision of the National Human Rights Commission, NCHR, has documented migrants and refugees taking part in pushbacks, describing them as ‘removers’.
“Either uniformed officers transport and hand over the alleged victims to the removers, who are third-country nationals, or the process takes place in the presence of uniformed officers,” said Ilias Tsambardoukas, the Mechanism’s coordinator.
“In some cases, the victims realised they were compatriots because the removers themselves tried to advise them, e.g., ‘don’t shout.’ So, there was a cultural affinity.”
In 2023, an internal report from the EU’s own border agency, Frontex, known as a Serious Incident Report, referred to the involvement of “foreign paramilitaries”, “masked third country nationals” or “Afghan masked men”, in connection with an incident in June of that year.
It reported that masked men carrying knives accompanied three Greek police officers in confronting dozens of mainly Turkish nationals trying to cross the border. The masked men beat them, robbed and pushed them back onto Turkish territory.
Such practices are also referenced in a lawsuit filed in Greek courts and the European Court of Human Rights by a Syrian national born in 1995, who entered Greece after spending several years in Turkey and is currently in Germany.
According to the lawsuit, the Syrian crossed from Turkey into Greece with his brother in July 2022. When his brother collapsed, they sought help and were taken to a police station. There, the Syrian said their belongings were confiscated and they were placed in a van. His brother died in the van, which drove them to the border.
“There was also a group that the Syrians refer to among themselves as ‘mercenaries,’ since they are civilians who speak Arabic and had their faces covered, and this group operated under the orders of the Greek authorities and carried out the procedures for the return”, the lawsuit states.
Marianna Tzeferakou, a lawyer at Refugee Support Aegean and who is representing the Syrian family, said Greek prosecutors dismissed the initial Greek lawsuit as “unfounded”, despite evidence including emergency call logs and GPS data. According to her, instead of saving a life, the call to emergency services triggered a brutal pushback operation.
Even the guards themselves have spoken about using migrants and refugees to turn back others.
In May 2023, five guards serving in Evros were arrested and charged with facilitating the entry of third-country nationals into Greece. One of them, in his defence, told the trial that he had in fact been key to developing the practice of selecting asylum seekers to help carry out pushbacks.
They first used Pakistanis, he said, in testimony obtained by Solomon. Then Syrians. The police dismissed the guard’s claims.
This phenomenon is also reflected in testimony recorded in October 2023 by an international organisation and which was obtained by Solomon. In it, a Pakistani man says he was apprehended by Greek border guards in spring 2023 and offered the chance to “work with them” for three months in Tychero rather than be returned to Turkey.
Like the two interviewed for this story, the Pakistani reported that six people were held at the border guard station at any one time; he said that whenever there was word of an imminent inspection at the station, those held there were sent into the forest. They were forced to scavenge for food among the items confiscated from migrants and refugees being pushed back.
