Alarm Phone Aegean Archive
Brutal pushback near Kos: 11 people attacked, robbed and then pushed back by Hellenic Coast Guard
Wed Feb 23 2022
We receive a call from relatives of 11 travellers in the Aegean Sea. They had lost contact to the boat after they had received a GPS-location in the area of Kos in Turkish waters. We were not able to establish direct contact with the travellers.
We alert the Turkish Coast Guard by phone and by email as relatives report that the people were pushed back. The Turkish Coast Guard states that they rescued 64 people (61 Palestinian and 3 Togolese nationality) from three rubber boats off the coast of Bodrum district, Muğla Province at 07:05h CET. They could not say, if the boat we were asking for was among those rescued.
We finally manage to speak with a young woman from the boat. They are detained in Turkey and still under shock. She reported:
We were heading towards the Greek island of Kos. At eight o'clock in the morning we reached the Greek sea, and the Greek patrol found us. They searched us and took our phones and beat the young men and terrified the children and women and then they broke the engine and took us back towards the Turkish sea. We stayed at sea for about an hour and suffered from high waves before the Turkish guards came to rescue us. Our boat was carrying 11 people, all of them from Palestine.