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Senior Greek police officers recruit migrants to violently push fellow asylum-seekers back into Türkiye, according to a new BBC investigation exposing systematic brutality at the Evros River.
Internal documents confirm that higher-ups directly order and oversee these clandestine operations.
Recent testimonies from the border further reveal masked men stripping, robbing, and beating vulnerable people seeking refuge.
Migrants face intense violence before being forced back into Türkiye.
Syrian refugee Amal told investigators masked men ambushed her family. "My daughter was wearing a diaper, they took it off," Amal stated. "She was screaming in fear." Amal also described seeing a young man beaten until he fainted.
Another Syrian migrant named Ahmad experienced similar violence.
Greek police beat him until he lost consciousness. Police officers then loaded him and dozens of others into a crowded truck. "Because of the crowding and the smell, people were suffocating. We couldn't breathe," Ahmad said.
Authorities handed the group to mercenaries who stripped and beat them. The mercenaries then forced them onto rubber dinghies and abandoned them in the middle of the river. "The water could sweep people away. They didn't care at all," Ahmad recounted.
"I was dying slowly in Syria," Ahmad stated. "People didn't leave their homes for no reason."
Border guards acknowledge using migrants to execute these illegal operations.
Transcripts from a 2024 disciplinary hearing involving five border guards show some openly admitting they recruited these men starting in 2020. Guards communicated on Viber using coded phrases like "X persons to the operation by Special Team."
Some recruits claim Greek officers forced them into this role.
Moroccan national Marwan stated that an officer pulled him from a jail cell and offered him the job. Marwan accepted the offer because he feared police beatings. "I am deeply sorry," Marwan stated. "I was under threat."
Greek authorities housed these recruits in a prison cell managed by an Afghan man who routinely beat Syrian migrants. Marwan worked at the border for ten weeks.
His duties included checking boats for punctures and burning migrant belongings to destroy evidence. Greek officers rewarded these recruits with stolen cash and transit papers.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis claims total ignorance regarding the use of mercenaries.
Mitsotakis told journalists he was "totally unaware" of the allegations. He defended the border policies and stated that European leaders refuse to allow a massive influx of refugees.
The Greek Ministry of Citizen Protection rejects the investigation findings. Ministry officials claim border protection happens "with full respect for fundamental rights and human dignity." They argue the reports rely on unverified secondary data.
Evidence contradicts these official denials.
Independent investigators within the EU border agency Frontex reviewed a June 2023 incident. The resulting report confirmed foreign nationals acted under Greek police instructions to abuse and deport migrants.
Lawyers also filed a case at the European Court of Human Rights for an Afghan woman. The woman alleges a masked mercenary speaking Farsi raped her before pushing her back into Türkiye.
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