BRUSSELS, 18 June. - (ANA) - The European Commission has said Greece must respect asylum laws, following a BBC report accusing the Greek coast guard of allegedly being responsible for the deaths of dozens of people over a three-year period.

 

But the Brussels-executive also said it is up to Athens "to investigate any allegations of wrongdoing”.

 

A former Greek coastguard officer has described as “clearly illegal” the actions of colleagues who abandoned nine migrants at sea in one of 15 alleged pushbacks from Greek islands or territorial waters that reportedly killed dozens of people.

 

In an interview with the BBC, Dimitris Baltakos, the Greek coastguard’s former head of special operations, refused to speculate about footage the broadcaster showed him, after earlier denying the coastguard would ever be told to do anything illegal.

 

But during a break he was recorded by a BBC camera telling someone out of shot in Greek: “It’s very clear, isn’t it. It’s not nuclear physics. I don’t know why they did it in broad daylight … It’s obviously illegal. It’s an international crime.”

 

The footage he described, shot by the Austrian activist Fayad Mulla and first published on the website of the New York Times, showed 12 people, including women and babies, being led down a Greek jetty on to a coastguard boat, then later abandoned to drift on a raft.

 

The group were rescued by the Turkish coastguard but the incident is one of more than a dozen between 2020 and 2023 analysed by the BBC that it said had resulted in a total of 43 deaths.   - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/18 June 2024