The violence used by the Greek Coast Guard when it decided to open fire on the migrant boat in 2014 was “absolutely unnecessary” and disproportionate. A Syrian man, who died months later after suffering serious injuries, paid the expenses. This was established by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, which condemned Greece for violating the substantive and procedural right to life of the fatally injured man on the boat. gunshots. The judge decided to pay 80 thousand euros in compensation for his wife and children, who were living in Sweden at the time of the events.
The accident occurred a short distance from the beach
The decision concerns the lawsuit filed by Alkhatib and others against Greece. The case concerned the serious gunshot wound suffered by a member of the applicants’ family on 22 September 2014, near the island of Pserimos, when a ship carrying people illegally to Greece was stopped by the Greek Coast Guard. The patrol boat, on patrol with a crew of two, spotted a speedboat with no distinctive markings or flag entering Vassiliki Bay, approximately 500 meters off the northeastern coast of the island. The Coast Guard commander had ordered the motor boat to stop, but the person driving the motor boat with the immigrants did not comply and attempted dangerous maneuvers, which caused the patrol boat’s inner tube to rupture.
Armed attack on the boat containing immigrants
According to what we read in the sentence at that time, the commander instructed the pilot to fire a warning shot, but the motorboat with the immigrants still did not stop. The commander then ordered his colleague to shoot the motorboat to disable it. From the report prepared on the day of the accident, it is understood that a total of “7 warning shots were fired” and “13 shots were fired into the motor boat’s engine”, that is, there was a full magazine of 20 bullets. Two Syrian citizens were seriously injured, one of the 14 people on the plane was shot in the shoulder and the other, Belal Tello, was shot in the head. Tello was transferred to intensive care at Rhodes hospital and later transferred to Sweden, where his wife and two children (defendants in the case) lived. Despite treatment, Tello died after being seriously injured in an incident with the coast guard on December 17, 2015.
Greece’s violations
According to the judges, the fundamental violation stemmed from the Greek government’s failure to enact a law regulating the use of potentially lethal force in maritime surveillance operations. The court also emphasizes that the coast guard, assuming that the ship was carrying passengers, did not take the necessary care to minimize the risks to the passengers’ lives. Regarding the procedural aspect, the Court observed that there were numerous shortcomings in the investigation carried out by the national authorities, which resulted in the loss of evidence and affected the adequacy of the investigation.
Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
