A court in Greece has halted the trial of nine Egyptian men accused of causing the Mediterranean’s largest migrant shipwreck in a decade.
Judges in the southern port city of Kalamata ruled that they had no jurisdiction to hear the case because the ship had sunk in international waters.
More than 600 people are feared drowned last June when an overcrowded fishing boat, the Adriana, sank on its way to Europe from Libya.
The suspect faced a life sentence if convicted of human smuggling and causing the boat to sink. There were cheers from protesters outside the court as the judges’ decision to drop the case became clear.
The BBC’s indictment revealed that the defendants were prosecuted based on evidence that had already been contradicted by at least six survivors, who said the coastguard capsized their boat and then pressured them to trap the Egyptians. to lure.
Human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, said they had strong reservations about the integrity of the Greek investigation and evidence, and questioned whether the defendants would receive a fair trial.
The Greek coast guard has consistently denied that its actions caused the disaster and authorities have rejected any claims of wrongdoing or cover-up. The allegations are being investigated by the Hellenic Naval Court.
It was feared that up to 500 people could be lost at sea
The nine suspects, Egyptian and aged between 20 and 41, stood trial on Tuesday.
The men were all on board the fishing boat Adriana which sank on June 14 last year in international waters, but in Greece’s demarcated rescue area – in one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean.
It is estimated that the boat was carrying around 750 migrants when it left the port of Tobruk in Libya almost a week earlier.
Eighty-two bodies were recovered, but the United Nations believes another 500 people – including 100 women and children who were in the boat’s hold – may have died.
The court ruled that the men could not be tried on charges of setting up a criminal organization and causing a shipwreck because it happened so far from the Greek coast.
As a result, the country declared them innocent of further charges of illegal entry into Greece and ruled that they were not smugglers.
The prosecutor had previously conceded the defense’s argument that there was no legal basis to try the men because the ship had sunk outside Greek waters, albeit in the demarcated Greek rescue zone.
The Greek coast guard had been tracking the boat for at least seven hours before the sinking, but later said it had not attempted a rescue because the ship was sailing safely at a “stable speed” and on a “steady course” to Italy – and that the passengers were not were in danger.
An earlier BBC investigation cast serious doubt on these claims.
When the BBC leveled allegations against the Greek Prime Minister last November, Kyriakos Mitsotakis said it was being investigated but that the blame lay with the smugglers.
“Our Coast Guard has saved tens of thousands of people at sea and we should be grateful for the work they do,” Mitsotakis said.
The condition of the boat is central to the prosecution case
The indictment, obtained by the BBC, shows that Greek prosecutors accused the nine Egyptians of causing the disaster by operating an extremely overcrowded ship, which they knew posed a clear danger to life.
It said: “The fishing vessel was not seaworthy as it was old, poorly maintained and not suitable for transferring such a large number of people, especially over such a long distance when there were no life jackets.”
The prosecution argued that each of the defendants took turns steering the ship and all were aware that severe overcrowding on both deck and in the hold was seriously affecting its stability.
The indictment also alleged that the nine Egyptian men were part of a smuggling ring and charged each passenger between $4,000 and $8,000 (£3,100 and £6,300) for a spot on the boat.
Egyptian defendants’ claims framed
The prosecutor’s complaint was based on interviews conducted by the coast guards themselves with nine other survivors in the days after the disaster.
No evidence appeared to have been presented to the court from the other 95 survivors.
Our team previously heard claims that some of the 104 survivors were pressured to identify the nine Egyptian men as human traffickers.
Two Syrian men, who we named Ahmad and Musaab to protect their identities, told the BBC that the coastguard had instructed them to keep quiet about other factors in the disaster and instead blame these nine men.
“They were imprisoned and wrongly accused by Greek authorities of trying to cover up their crime,” Musaab said.
In separate interviews in Athens, four other survivors said they believed the Egyptians were paying passengers like them and had been framed.
But other survivors are said to have stated that they were indeed abused by some of the suspects – dubbed the Pylos Nine, based on the name of the Greek town of Pylos, near the site of the sinking.
Allegations against the Greek Coast Guard not mentioned in the indictment
In the weeks following the disaster, several survivors claimed that a Greek patrol vessel actually caused the migrant boat to capsize in a last-ditch, failed attempt to tow it.
This accusation was not mentioned anywhere in the court filing, despite the United Nations previously saying the claims merited an independent investigation.
Ahmad and Musaab, who spoke to the BBC last year, claimed they had been silenced and intimidated by Greek authorities after suggesting the patrol vessel had caused the sinking.
“They attached a rope to the left side. Everyone went to the right side of our boat to balance it,” Musaab said. “The Greek ship took off quickly, causing our boat to capsize. They continued to tow it for quite a distance.”
A total of six survivors independently described to the BBC – almost identical in detail – how the coastguards capsized their boat.
Cell phone evidence not examined
No video from aboard the Adriana has ever surfaced, let alone the moment of its sinking.
The Coast Guard said their own high-quality cameras were not recording.
Some survivors said they sometimes filmed on board, but coastguards confiscated their cellphones shortly after they were rescued.
These phones were apparently subsequently lost before being found almost a month later in a bag on board the only coastguard ship that had been present at the sinking.
Defense lawyers had asked that some phones be examined for potentially useful evidence, but court documents obtained by the BBC show that the investigating magistrate ruled last year that this would be a futile exercise – because a “natural consequence” of falling the migrant in the sea was that their phones would all be irreversibly damaged.
“Seawater has entered the seized phones, resulting in the inability to extract any form of stored digital data from them. [attempting to extract data] is pointless,” it was said.
Greek military investigation underway
The Navy Court’s separate investigation into the Coast Guard’s potential liability began in the weeks after the disaster, but is still in its preliminary stages.
Human rights groups believe this must be completed before a criminal trial against the Egyptian defendants takes place.
Christos Dimopoulos, director of Amnesty International Greece, said: “The criminal judge will likely have incomplete information when assessing the guilt of the defendants. There is a real risk that the trial will be based on incomplete and/or questionable evidence.”
The Greek government, which has pledged to hold smugglers to account and crack down on illegal border crossings, has said justice will be done.
Meanwhile, Judith Sunderland, associate director for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch, said: “Credible and meaningful responsibility for one of the worst shipwrecks in the Mediterranean must include a determination of any liabilities of the Greek authorities.”
