The Court found that Greece had expelled a Turkish national without an assessment of the risk of harm to her on return to Turkey (A.R.E. v. Greece). The judges also recognized that Greece had unlawfully detained her prior to the pushback and viewed this as a form of enforced disappearance. It was also established that the Greek legal system offered no effective remedies for the violations.
However, in the case of an Afghan unaccompanied minor (G.R.J. v Greece) who was taken from a Greek refugee camp and forced onto an inflatable raft in the Aegean Sea by Greek officers, the Court found his case inadmissible. Although the Court recognized the extreme difficulty of gathering evidence secret state actions, the judges decided the applicant had failed to provide sufficient evidence of his pushback, showing heightened expectations of what evidence victims of pushbacks should be able to provide and creating further obstacles to accountability.
Amongst the group of cases against Greece still pending at the European Court of Human Rights are applicants from Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Tunisia, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Congo, and Afghanistan. The applicants explain that their expulsions, ill-treatment and detention violated article 2 (right to life), article 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment), article 5 (right to liberty and security), article 8 (respect for private and family life), and article 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the ECHR.
The joint TPI by ECCHR, PRO ASYL and Refugee Support Aegean analyzes victims of pushbacks’ access to effective domestic investigations for claims alleging violations of article 2 and article 3 ECHR. The submission draws on decades of reporting from monitoring institutions such as the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture showing that the ill-treatment, inhumane arbitrary detention and summary, violent pushbacks are part of an intentional and coordinated policy of migration deterrence. These reports also conclude that such policy is in continuity with a widespread issue of ill-treatment by and impunity of Greek forces.
The TPI examines how systemic obstacles to Greek law-enforcers’ accountability for ill-treatment and endangering life specifically impact victims of pushback operations. It analyses how the secret and informal nature of the operations, coupled with the fact that victims and witnesses are (undocumented) non-citizens results in no chances for an effective investigation. The TPI highlights the reluctance of Greek authorities, including investigators, prosecutors and courts, to shed light on these secret border operations and how it contributes to persistent impunity and allows pushback practices to continue. As a result, victims of pushbacks from Greece do not have access to effective domestic remedies for claims under article 2 and 3 ECHR.
An additional factsheet assesses over twenty years of Greece's concealed state policy of pushbacks. The phenomenon of short-term disappearances during pushbacks was also analysed by ECCHR in a submission to the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances.
