One by one, the lawyers descend Monday afternoon from the marble steps of the court in Kalamata. “My client is 21, still a boy, he keeps crying,” says Athanasios Iliopoulos on the lawn in front of the building. His colleague Dimitris Drakopoulos says his client should have had an interpreter when he gave his testimony. Wasn’t there then? “It should,” Drakopoulos repeats.
Five days after the migrant shipwreck off the coast of the Peloponnese peninsula, the southern Greek town of Kalamata is already the scene of its first court case. The defendants are nine Egyptians aged between 21 and 31. They were among the 104 survivors of the ship disaster, which carried between 400 and 800 people. After the discovery of two more bodies on Monday, eighty victims have now been recovered.
The Egyptians have been identified as the smugglers by nine other passengers from Syria and Pakistan. They are suspected of participating in a criminal organization, causing shipwreck and endangering human lives. According to their lawyers, the defendants were ‘just’ passengers on the disaster ship, among hundreds of others looking for a better life in Europe, and are innocent. On Tuesday they will have the chance to tell their side of the story.
Other debt
Whether convicted or not, the lightning charge diverts attention from another question of guilt. That question concerns the Greek coastguard: what did it know, at what time? What exactly did she do? And what did she leave behind?
So far little remains of the line of defense of the Greek authorities. It read: the migrants did not want to be helped by us, we did not throw any ropes at them, and they were also on their way to Italy.
That the coastguard did throw ropes was already admitted on Friday by a spokesman for the Greek interim government. According to survivors, towing the ship may even have contributed to it capsizing. In general, it is noticeable that the stories of the survivors differ greatly from what the authorities say.
That the migrants did not want to be helped is disputed by the NGO Alarm Phone, a network of activists who run a hotline for migrant boats in distress. The organization reported that people on board had begged for help at least twice hours before the disaster, after which Alarm Phone alerted the Greek authorities.
That the migrant ship was still sailing, let alone to Italy, was debunked on Sunday by the BBC and the Greek medium News 24/7. Both media outlets independently revealed that the ship had been stationary for seven to eleven hours before capsizing. The BBC came to this conclusion based on the locations of ships coming to the rescue on MarineTraffic, a website that tracks ships’ movements; News 24/7 is based on data from the Port Authority of Kalamata.
On Monday afternoon, the Greek Coast Guard, in response to these publications, continued to maintain that the ship was still sailing until it sank. From the moment the ship was discovered to the shipwreck, fifteen hours in all, it would have traveled a total of thirty nautical miles (55.5 kilometers).
And then there was the question of whether the Coast Guard should have done more to prevent the massive loss of life. More and more incriminating information is coming out about this too. Thus published the Greek newspaper Efimerida ton Syntakton (‘Editor’s Paper’) about the oil tanker Faithful Warrior, which had already warned the Coast Guard hours before the shipwreck that the boat was “rocking dangerously due to overcrowding on all decks”. In its official record, the Coast Guard makes no mention of this warning.
The lawyers of the Egyptian defendants put a lot of emphasis on the role of the coast guard in their defense. For example, how can their clients be blamed for causing the shipwreck if it turns out that the Coast Guard played a decisive role in this? Before that question has received a conclusive answer, the case is already in full swing.
Greek backgammon
That the port of Kalamata five days earlier was the scene of desperate people looking for their relatives, can only be noticed on Monday evening by Italian TV journalists who carry out their cross talks with the studio against the background of the Taygetos ridge and LNG tankers at sea. Children play basketball in the municipal Railway Park, while the elderly play a game of tavli (Greek backgammon) on a terrace.
Immediately after the disaster, deputy mayor Giorgos Favas had to arrange shelter for the 104 survivors. Fortunately, he says, he was helped by the citizens of his city, who came en masse to bring food, clothes and shoes. “They felt very sorry for those people after they saw what had happened on TV.” The Coast Guard, Favas says, faced a tough task, but it did it well.
Favas is affiliated with the governing party Nea Dimokratia, known for its tough stance against migration and support for illegal pushbacks at sea. But when faced with such a tragedy, he says, only humanity counts. “That goes beyond party preference.”
Read also: “Forgive me if anything happens,” was the last thing Israa Aoun (21) told her husband
A version of this article also appeared in the June 20, 2023 issue of the newspaper.
#Lightning #lawsuit #alleged #smugglers #diverts #attention #role #Greek #Coast #Guard