G.R.J. v Greece: Abductions and torture in the Aegean

The specific manner in which the Greek authorities summarily expelled G.R.J., by abandoning him to drift in an inflatable and motorless raft, is part of the Greek Coast Guard’s systematic ‘pushbacks’ practices. It is emblematic of a well-documented and widely established mode of operation since at least March 2020, whereby Greek forces in the Aegean Sea send asylum-seekers adrift in non-navigable rafts with indifference as to whether they live or die.

This practice was reconstructed by the research agency Forensic Architecture, which published an online interactive platform that maps and showcases 1,018 documented incidents of ‘pushbacks’ in the Aegean Sea, involving the illegal expulsion of 27,464 people, including the case of G.R.J., between 28 February 2020 and July 15 2022. Of these, 194 incidents took place from, or off the shores of, the island of Samos. Forensic Architecture established that Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, was directly involved in 122 of these cases, and had knowledge of a total of 417, “having logged them in its own operational archives, codified and masked as ‘preventions of entry’” (as revealed by OLAF’s report on Frontex, following Lighthouse Reports’ investigations).

A growing number of alleged cases of ‘pushbacks’ by Greek authorities that follow the same pattern have been communicated to the Court since early 2020. Leading investigative groups and media organisations, including Lighthouse Reports, Bellingcat, Der Spiegel, and ARD/Report Mainz, have also investigated and extensively reported on ‘pushbacks’ from Samos as well as other Aegean islands. Meanwhile, the Greek government continues to deny that ‘pushbacks’ are happening, either in the Aegean or at Greece’s Evros river border, and stresses its commitment to international law.

G.R.J., an unaccompanied child seeking asylum, arrived on the Greek island of Samos by sea from Turkey on September 8, 2020 with a group of 17 Afghan asylum-seekers. He and another unaccompanied child from the group made their way to the refugee camp in Vathy, where they presented themselves to the authorities in order to register as asylum-seekers. They were taken to a police station inside the camp under the pretext that they would be placed in quarantine for two weeks—in reference to Covid-19 public health measures in force at the time—before being brought back to the camp. They were also (falsely) told that they could not obtain asylum-seeker cards as the Greek Asylum Service was closed due to the pandemic. Not only were the two minors denied the opportunity to register, but they were effectively abducted from the camp by Greek officers and proceeded to be expelled through abandonment at sea.

Greek officials transported G.R.J. and his companion to the port, where they forced the two teenagers onto a Hellenic Coast Guard vessel, handcuffed them, and seized their personal belongings. Coast Guard officers drove the ship into the middle of the Aegean Sea, near the Turkish maritime border, forced the two youths into an inflatable, motorless raft and abandoned them to drift. They paddled with their hands until they were rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard. They were detained in Turkey for several days until they were finally released, left destitute and without support.

G.R.J.’s case was first documented by Aegean Boat Report in September 2020.

The case argues that Greece’s treatment of G.R.J. violated several legal obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), including the right to life (Article 2); the prohibition of torture (Article 3); and the right to an effective remedy (Article 13).

We argue that, by deliberately abandoning G.R.J. and the other minor in a life-threatening situation, and with the slim likelihood that they would be found and rescued, the Greek Coast Guard violated the prohibition of the use of force, as its actions may have—intentionally or unintentionally—led to the arbitrary killing of a person. The Greek Coast Guard endangered G.R.J. and the other minor’s life by leaving them adrift in a leaking dinghy on a rough sea, knowing that the persons on board could not swim, had no means of manoeuvring the life raft, and did not have any food or water.

We further argue that the deliberate and intimidating nature of this treatment, evident from the widespread use of this mode of expulsion, constituted a violation of the prohibition of torture. G.R.J. experienced severe “physical and mental suffering” (Ireland v The United Kingdom, 5310/71, 13 December 1977, §167) and was left in extreme distress as a result of the deliberately cruel actions of the Hellenic Coast Guard personnel. G.R.J. also suffered the anguish of uncertainty as he was kept in ignorance of his fate while he thought that he was in the process of accessing asylum procedures, which the Court has held amounts to inhuman treatment in enforced disappearance cases (e.g., Varnava v Turkey, §201). G.R.J. was further subject to a violation of his rights under Article 3, due to his denial of access to asylum procedures and summary expulsion to Turkey.

G.R.J. had no access to a suspensive remedy that could have brought an end to his ill-treatment at the time of his illegal abduction, pending his expulsion from Greece. The secret and informal nature of such operations obstructed his access to justice in Greece—as also analysed by the joint third party intervention filed in support of this case and others by ECCHR, PRO ASYL and Refugee Support Aegean, which finds that victims of ‘pushbacks’ do not have access to effective domestic investigations in Greece for claims alleging violations of Articles 2 and 3 ECHR. This is one of a dozen third party interventions in this group of cases, many of which focus on the absence of investigations and remedies in Greece.

Critically, due to the Greek government’s established practice of denying its officials’ involvement in ‘pushbacks’, and the absence of any paper trail for such inherently secretive acts, we argue that the specificity and established pattern of facts—as well as the gravity of the violations alleged and the Convention rights concerned—aligns with the Court’s case law on the reversal of the burden of proof. In such cases, the responsibility under the procedural limb of Articles 2, 3 and and 13 to provide a satisfactory and convincing explanation by materially addressing and refuting the evidentiary proof and detailed statement provided by the applicant rests with the Greek authorities (Salman v Turkey [GC], §100; Nachova and Others v Bulgaria [GC], nos. 43577/98 and 43579/98, §147; Iskandarov v Russia, no. 17185/05, §107; El-Masri v the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia [GC], no. 39630/09, §151; Ilias and Ahmed (GC) §141; M.S.S. v Belgium and Greece, §§346-50).

The main purpose of these cases is to seek a determination of the facts concerning patterns of ‘pushbacks’ taking place in the Aegean maritime borderzone, which the Greek authorities—together with Frontex—have sought to conceal, deny and cover-up. The group of cases pending before the Court, of which these cases are a part, seeks to establish (a) that such cases are in fact happening and being concealed by the Greek political and legal systems; and (b) that their concealment results in the denial of access to justice for survivors of ‘pushbacks’ in Greece. More broadly, these cases further the view that the EU should take enforcement action against Greece and suspend its financial and technical assistance to its border operations, including via Frontex, for as long as Greece’s actions continue to amount to systemic breaches of fundamental rights and other EU law.

Given the Greek government’s systematic denial of ‘pushbacks’, the cases seek to establish the right to truth with regards to all incidents similar to G.R.J.’s case. While applicants to the Court normally bear the burden of proof, the Court has reversed that burden onto the respondent state, and found applicants’ allegations to be sufficiently substantiated, based on the significance of the case “for other victims of similar crimes and the general public”, thus establishing “the right to know what had happened” (El-Masri v the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia [GC], no. 39630/09, §152-153). The systemic practice of ‘pushbacks’ exemplified by the case of G.R.J. is similar in factual and legal consequence to the practice of extraordinary rendition examined in El-Masri, where the Court established that detention “outside the normal legal system” and “deliberate circumvention of due process” are “anathema to the rule of law and the values protected by the Convention” (see the judgement in El-Masri, citing Babar Ahmad and Others, §§113-14).

The advocacy we have engaged in with others around the cases seeks to expose and contest the operational obligations of Frontex through its Joint Operation Poseidon with the Greek Coast Guard in the Aegean Sea. Lighthouse Reports and other investigative findings on Frontex’s involvement and complicity in ‘pushbacks’ conducted by the Greek authorities were taken up first by the European Parliament’s Frontex Scrutiny Working Group (FSWG) and then by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), revealing the manner in which the agency has covered up Greece’s illegal expulsions, including by recording incidents of ‘pushbacks’ as forms of ‘prevention of departure’ in its Joint Operations Reporting Application (JORA) reporting system, as was the case in G.R.J.. Meanwhile, Frontex failed to conduct its own investigations into widely documented systemic ‘pushbacks’ in its area of operations in the Aegean, and of the agency’s involvement therein, including by failing to record ‘serious incident reports’. Instead, the agency has repeatedly denied any involvement in ‘pushbacks’ and reiterated its reliance on Greek national investigative mechanisms.

On 14 December 2023, the European Parliament adopted a resolution urging Frontex to suspend operational activities in Greece because of ‘pushbacks’ and other forms of (border) violence against migrants and refugees, and to take proactive measures to ensure its operations’ compliance with fundamental rights. The agency has not been held to account for these systemic failures—recently, the EU General Court refused an action for non-contractual damages against the agency (due to the remoteness of the ‘causal link’ with the agency’s actions). While the European Court of Human Rights does not have jurisdiction over the agency, if Greece’s violations of the Convention are upheld there will be further grounds for both the agency and EU institutions to take measures to limit their involvement in Greece’s border operations.

3 March 2021: Application form submitted to European Court of Human Rights (with Prakken d’Oliveira; while members of de:border were part of the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN))
13 December 2021: Court communicates the application to Greece on questions of merits and admissibility, requesting its response by April 2022
22 June 2022: Greek Government’s response to the communication received from Court
3 October 2022: Court transmits TPIs for written observations by 24 October 2022
3 November 2022: Observations in response to the TPIs and the Greek Government’s submissions, as well as two expert annexes by Forensic Architecture and Lighthouse Reports respectively, filed by applicant
17 November 2023: Letter from the Court informing of its decision of 14 November 2023 to schedule a hearing under Art 54(5) of the Court’s Regulation
4 June 2024: Chamber hearing

G.R.J. entered Greece in 2022 after a year of living in precarity in Turkey, and two further ‘pushbacks’ from Greece along the land border at Evros. He was granted asylum in Greece in 2023.

Niamh Keady-Tabbal and Valentina Azarova, ‘Strategic litigation on access to fundamental rights and protection for refugees from Syria in Lebanon’, Civil Society Workshop, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network & Lebanese Centre for Human Rights (CLDH), Beirut, 11 April 2022 (& contribution to Marielle Hayek, Guide on documenting pushbacks at the Cyprus-Lebanon-Syria borders, EuroMed Rights, April 2023)

Niamh Keady-Tabbal and Itamar Mann, Weaponising rescue: Law and the materiality of migration management in the Aegean, Leiden Journal of International Law (2022)

Valentina Azarova, Amanda Brown, Charles Heller, Niamh Keady-Tabbal, Noemi Magugliani, Itamar Mann, Violeta Moreno-Lax, Lorenzo Pezzani, Documenting and litigating against the shifting practices of refoulement across the EU’s maritime frontier, Asyl 3 (2021) 13-17

Niamh Keady-Tabbal and Covadonga Bachiller López, Dividing Labour, Evading Responsibility: Frontex-Hellenic Coast Guard’s Modus Operandi in the Aegean, Border Criminologies, University of Oxford Faculty of Law, 27 July 2021

Niamh Keady-Tabbal and Itamar Mann, “Pushbacks” as Euphemism, European Journal of International Law: Talk!, 14 April 2021

Niamh Keady-Tabbal and Covadonga Bachiller López, Validating Border Violence on the Aegean: Frontex’s Internal Records, Border Criminologies, University of Oxford Faculty of Law (13 January 2021)

Niamh Keady-Tabbal and Itamar Mann, Tents at Sea: How Greek Officials Use Rescue Equipment for Illegal Deportations, Just Security, May 2020

Vincent Wood, Greek ‘pushbacks’ brought to European Court after child refugees ‘towed out  to sea and abandoned on raft’, The Independent, 4 March 2021

Olivia Dehez et al, Grèce: refoulements illégaux en Mer Egée, ARTE (at 21 mins)

Forensic Architecture, Drift-backs in the Aegean Sea, July 2022 (contribution of G.R.J.’s case)

Flip Schüller & Fadi Fahad, ‘Ten years on after Hirsi Jamaa: An overview and analysis of ECtHR case law on pushbacks’, Crimmigratie & Recht 6:2 (2022)

Bellingcat, Samos and the Anatomy of a Maritime Push-Back, 20 May 2020