BREAKING – Justice Delivered: ECtHR condemns Greece for the 2018 Agathonisi refugee shipwreck

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered a judgment today against Greece relating to the death of sixteen people in the 2018 shipwreck of Agathonisi. The Greek Coast Guard failed to rescue them despite being promptly, repeatedly informed by all possible means by a relative who was already on Samos island. Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) represented the families of 14 victims.

Specifically, in the early hours of 16 March 2018, a young refugee living in the Samos refugee camp immediately alerted the authorities after his sister sent him the coordinates of the boat she was on together with other family members and refugees, at immediate risk of sinking. The boat ultimately sank and the passengers remained unassisted at sea for hours until most successively died by late afternoon. Sixteen people drowned, only three were rescued. The Greek Coast Guard denied that the incident took place on Friday 16 March. It alleged that it happened one day later (Saturday 17 March), the day when the survivors were located.

The Court ruling found breach of Article 2 ECHR (breach of the right to life). According to the ECtHR, the Greek authorities did not take the necessary actions to rescue the people even though they ought to have been aware of the immediate risk from the moment they were informed of the incident by the victims’ relative early on 16 March. The Coast Guard failed to implement an appropriate plan to locate the persons who were already at sea, and shortly ended the search and rescue operation without locating them and without informing their relative.

The Court also condemned Greece on account of the ineffective criminal investigation into the incident that resulted in the case being shelved by the Piraeus Naval Court Prosecutor. It held that the investigation conducted by Coast Guard bodies (Port Authority of Samos, Internal Affairs Unit) was not independent due to the existence of hierarchical and institutional links between the suspects and the competent authorities. It also inferred a strong presumption of lack of independence from a Coast Guard press release which distinguished the two different dates of shipwrecks while the investigation was still ongoing. In addition, the ECtHR highlighted crucial gaps in evidence assessment owed to the unjustified failure to consider a voice message to the authorities from one of the victims and to serious deficiencies in the victims’ forensic reports.

The ruling follows a series of Strasbourg Court condemnations against Greece for violations of the right to life and for failure on the part of the Naval Court Prosecutor to investigate the incidents, from the deadly Farmakonisi shipwreck (Safi v. Greece) to the deaths of refugees by Coast Guard shootings in Pserimos (Alkhatib v. Greece) and Symi (Almukhlas v. Greece).