Classified Database
Frontex Involved in Illegal Pushbacks of Hundreds
of Refugees
An extended investigation over the course of several
months reveals how deeply the EU's border agency, Frontex, is involved in the
Greek refugee pushback campaign. The illegal acts are registered and concealed
in a classified database.
By Giorgos
Christides und Steffen Lüdke
28.04.2022, 20.55 Uhr
https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/frontex-involved-in-illegal-pushbacks-of-hundreds-of-refugees-a-9fe90845-efb1-4d91-a231-48efcafa53a0
Amjad Naim
had almost reached Samos when the men wearing the balaclavas arrived. It was
May 13, 2020, and Naim was sitting in an unstable rubber dinghy. The Palestinian
had been on his way to Greece together with nearly 30 other refugees. He could
already see the coast, he would later recall by telephone. In just a few
meters, his journey would be complete.
Naim heard
the noise of a helicopter overhead. Then a large boat approached. Naim
remembers the Greek flag on the ship and the dinghies. He says the hooded men
then attacked.
Naim says
the men shot into the water, struck the boat with a hook and destroyed the
engine, stopping the vessel. Only then, he says, did they take the refugees on
board. Naim was crying, he hid his mobile phone in his underpants.
The next
images that exist of Naim document a crime. Naim filmed for 55 seconds. The
images show him and the other refugees on two inflatable life rafts being
abandoned at sea by the Greek Coast Guard. The square platform they are sitting
on is a wobbly rubber life raft without a motor.
A Greek
Panther Coast Guard ship, 18 meters long, pulls the life raft toward Turkey.
Another ship accompanies the boat on its mission. The video also shows water
seeping into Naim’s raft.
Then, as
can be seen in the video, the Greek Coast Guard unties the rope, leaving the
refugees to their fates in the middle of the Aegean. It would be several hours
before the Turkish Coast Guard rescued the frightened and thirsty refugees.
What Amjad
Naim filmed that morning is what human rights activist call a pushback:
Asylum-seekers are abandoned at sea at the European Union’s external border,
outside Greek territorial waters. That way, they can’t apply for asylum in the
EU. Such operations are illegal and violate international, European and Greek
law. The Greek Coast Guard has been systematically carrying out these pushbacks
since March 2020, with the help of the EU’s Frontex border protection agency.
Over the
past two years, DER SPIEGEL has gathered solid evidence of these legal
violations. Naim’s case shows that German Federal Police officers in the
Frontex mission are also involved in the pushbacks. Frontex officials find the
boats and then leave it to the Greeks to conduct the pushback.
The Joint
Operations Reporting Application (JORA) database hosted on Frontex's servers is
used to record events at the EU's external borders. The contents of the
database are classified, only European border guards have access to the data.
An entry also exists for the incident involving Naim.
"Prevention
of Departure"
The entry
states that a German helicopter as well as a patrol boat from the Federal
Police on Frontex duty spotted the refugee boat that day in Turkish waters. The
German police then reported it to the joint control center in Piraeus, and the
Greeks in turn informed the Turkish Coast Guard. And that was it. Allegedly.
The
incident is registered as "prevention of departure" in the Frontex
database. The term is actually only supposed to be used when the Turkish Coast
Guard stops refugee boats in Turkish waters. But that isn’t what happened. Naim
had clearly been in Greek waters, and he should have been permitted to apply
for asylum in that country.
There is no
mention in the database of the arrival and attack by the Greek border guards in
the immediate vicinity of Samos, the unstable life rafts or the pushback, all
of which are clearly captured on video. The description of the incident is
clearly false.
DER
SPIEGEL, together with Lighthouse Reports, the Swiss media outlets SRF and
Republik and the French newspaper Le Monde spent months researching Frontex’s
involvement in the Greek pushbacks. Following a request under the European
Freedom of Information Act, the researchers succeeded in gaining access to the
internal Frontex database and matching entries with photos and videos of
pushback operations. The research reveals the full extent of Frontex support
for Greek pushbacks in the Aegean Sea for the first time.
The
research shows that Frontex was involved in the illegal pushbacks of at least
957 refugees between March 2020 and September 2021. In 22 of these cases, the
availability of open source intelligence like photos of the refugees in Greek
life rafts, make it possible to define them as pushbacks without any doubt. The
true number of pushbacks conducted with Frontex assistance is likely even
higher.
The
reporting also shows that these pushbacks are neatly recorded in the database,
but always with the false, inconspicuous term "prevention of
departure." In other words, the JORA database is being fudged. The
database of one of Europe’s biggest agencies, originally intended to provide an
accurate picture of the situation at EU borders, has instead become a tool for
covering up the Greek pushbacks as well as the complicity of an EU agency.
Those Who
Make It To Land Have To Hide
The coast
of Lesbos is located only a few kilometers away from Turkey. During the wave of
refugees to Europe in 2015, helpers here greeted refugees with thermal
blankets. They were heartbreaking scenes. Many of the people who helped still
talk about it today, and they were proud to be a part of European hospitality
towards those in need. Today, when refugees come to Lesbos, they have to hide
on the coast. They all know what they might face if members of the Greek Coast
Guard catch them.
On May 28,
2021, a large group of nearly 50 people made it to the island. Photos show how
the frightened people hid in the bushes. "We are in the forest. We need
your help," they wrote to the NGO Aegean Boat Report, which often keeps in
touch with asylum-seekers who dare to make the Aegean crossing. Two of them
were sick, the refugees wrote. The location they shared via WhatsApp showed
them as being not far from Mytilene, the island's capital. "We're afraid,"
they wrote. But only a few hours later, some members of the group found
themselves back on the water, abandoned on one of the Greek Coast Guard’s life
rafts. In the photo, several people can be clearly discerned who had
demonstrably been on land before. Only 17 people made it past the Greek police
into the refugee camp, where they were allowed to apply for asylum.
The Frontex
database also whitewashes this pushback. The database entry states that Frontex
had been involved in the incident, with the corresponding checkmark set. It
lists 32 refugees at 1 p.m., with the Turkish coastal town of Çeşme listed as
the location. Once again, it is labelled as a case of "prevention of
departure." Yet no one had prevented the refugees’ departure. They had all
made it to Lesbos unscathed.
There don’t appear to be any pushbacks in the Frontex
database, refugees turn back voluntarily with their boats or are at least
intercepted without the intervention of the Greek Coast Guard. It’s like
peering into an alternative reality.
The JORA
database has more than 1 million rows and 137 columns. It was set up as a
record of the work performed by Frontex. Each entry shows how important the
border protection force is and how well the millions in taxpayer money are
invested. The entries in the database are first made by Greek officials and
then checked several times. After that, they are sent to Frontex headquarters
in Warsaw, where officials validate the entries. If they are wrong or
inconsistent, they have to be corrected – at least in theory. In practice,
however, it appears that they are simply rubber stamped. That includes two
instances where it was proven that refugees had already reached Greek islands.
The
official version given in these cases is always the same. The wording is
identical: They state that refugees had been discovered either by Frontex or
Greek forces. And that headquarters in Piraeus had informed the sea rescue
control center in Ankara. After that, a ship from the Turkish Coast Guard came
and "took over responsibility of the incident." There don’t appear to
be any pushbacks in the Frontex database, refugees turn back voluntarily with
their boats or are at least intercepted without the intervention of the Greek
Coast Guard. It’s a glimpse into an alternative reality.
Officials
certainly have an appropriate category available to them in the JORA database:
"illegal border crossing." According to the research, however, they
only use this category in the few cases where asylum-seekers are registered in
a Greek refugee camp and are allowed to apply for asylum. In pushback cases,
they cover up the fact that these refugees had already crossed the border, so
they won’t have to explain themselves later.
Insufficient
Oversight
Even the
people who are tasked with oversight at Frontex took notice that the
information in the database was at times wrong. In two incidents, the Frontex
Management Board found that they had been registered in JORA as
"prevention of departure" incidents, even though the refugees had
already made it to Greek waters. That was "inconsistent," the Frontex
management board noted at the time in its report, which DER SPIEGEL has
obtained. The agency’s fundamental rights officer also called the
classification "questionable." But no one was apparently interested
in taking a closer look.
When
contacted by DER SPIEGEL for comment, Frontex said it is not in a position to
comment on individual cases and specific operational details for its ongoing
and past operations. The agency says that it has no power to investigate
actions of the national authorities, and that it is under Greek command in the
Aegean Sea. The German Federal Police say they are not aware of having been
involved in any incident that may have been given the false "prevention of
departure" classification. Meanwhile, the Greek Coast Guard stressed that
pushbacks were not part of its operational plan. It added that all complaints
would be investigated by the relevant Greek authorities.
Behind
closed doors, however, some border guards admit that the database is
systematically whitewashed. Two Frontex officials and a member of the Greek
Coast Guard, both of whom asked not to be named, told DER SPEIGEL that illegal
pushbacks are routinely registered as "prevention of departure"
incidents. "Why don’t they call it pushbacks and get it over with?"
the Coast Guard member asked.
Pressure
Mounting on Frontex Chief
The person
responsible for the fact that Greek pushbacks are being covered up at Frontex
is Fabrice Leggeri. The 54-year-old Frenchman has been executive director of
the EU agency since 2015 and has bestowed the agency with new powers during his
tenure. Its budget has grown enormously under his leadership to its current
level of 758 million euros. The question is how Frontex is supposed to wield
its power: Is the agency supposed to assist illegal operations at Europe's
external borders – or is it supposed to investigate and prevent such crimes, as
is stipulated in the EU agency’s statutes?
Greece is
one of Leggeri’s most important partners. Almost no other region plays host to
as many Frontex officers, a testament to the fact that the country is one of
the important migration routes to the EU. Leggeri gets on very well with the
conservative Greek government, and at conferences, he can be seen joking with
Notis Mitarachi, Greece’s migration minister. Mitarachi, a hardliner,
symbolizes the Greek pushback campaign like nobody else. In late January,
Mitarachi gave the Frontex chief an award for his efforts. Thanks to Leggeri’s
support, he said, the number of refugee arrivals in Greece is lower than it has
been in years.
Leggeri has
been under pressure for months as a result of the reporting conducted by DER
SPIEGEL and its partners. To this day, Leggeri has not acknowledged that
pushbacks are taking place in the Aegean Sea. In response, the European
Parliament set up a permanent review committee and froze 12 percent of
Frontex’s budget. For the first time, a pushback victim has now moved forward
to sue the agency. And on May 15, Swiss citizens will even vote in a referendum
on whether they want to continue contributing to the agency’s increased budget.
The pushbacks have become a major topic of discussion in that campaign. The
agency’s reputation has taken a significant hit.
But
Leggeri’s biggest problem is OLAF, the EU’s anti-fraud agency. Investigators
with that agency intervene whenever EU rules have been broken by officials, and
they began looking into Frontex following the revelations published by DER
SPIEGEL. In a recent investigative report, they lodged serious allegations
against three leading Frontex officials, likely including Leggeri. According to
the report, the officials covered up pushbacks and violated EU regulations. The
more than 200-page report is still classified, with only the agency’s
management board and those accused of misdeeds allowed to see it. The
investigative report apparently has made Frontex so uncomfortable that the
agency has forbidden OLAF investigators from handing it over to the European
Parliament.
Leggeri’s
concerns are understandable. OLAF searched his office as well as that of his
closest confidant, Thibauld de la Haye Jousselin. And the anti-fraud investigators
continue to investigate. They have already announced two further reports. Even
if Leggeri were to manage to remain in office for the time being, his days as
the agency’s head are likely numbered.
The latest
revelations could further exacerbate Leggeri’s already delicate situation. Some
222 of the entries in the JORA database up to September of last year are listed
as "prevention of departure" incidents. Many of them are likely
pushbacks.
Leggeri
himself could easily have noticed that his own database was being fudged. In
several pushback cases in which Leggeri had to testify in the European
Parliament or in front of the Frontex Management Board, the description
provided in the JORA database obviously had nothing to do with reality. But it
appears that he wasn't bothered.
With
additional reporting by Htet Aung, Bashar Deeb, Emmanuel Freudenthal, Gabriele
Gatti and Francesca Pierigh
