Names marked with an asterisk have been changed to protect identities.
Athens, Greece – Said* cannot understand why he is in Avrona prison, northeast of the Greek capital Athens.
“If anyone asks me why I'm in prison, I say I don't know,” said the 21-year-old Egyptian. “We're scared because we're kids. We're told we're going to get 400 or 1000 years in prison. Every time they say that, we die.”
He is one of nine Egyptians in pre-trial detention facing criminal charges in a shipwreck off the town of Pylos last year that left hundreds dead trying to reach Europe. .
The group is charged under Greek law with forming a criminal organization, aiding and abetting illegal immigration and causing the shipwreck.
They are the only ones held captive on the shipwreck.
However, Al Jazeera, in partnership with Omnia TV and Efimerida Ton Sintakton newspaper, says all nine suspects insist they did not organize the smuggling or profit from the smuggling trip. can make it clear.
They claim they were simply the surviving passengers and that the Greek coast guard capsized the packed boat.
They told Al Jazeera and its partners by phone from detention that Greek prosecutors did not accurately accept their testimony and pressured them into signing documents they did not understand under violence or threats of violence.
Two other survivors also insisted that the nine defendants were innocent and that the Greek coast guard was responsible.
Fearing retribution for speaking out against the Greek state, all 11 sources asked Al Jazeera to conceal their identities and use pseudonyms in this article.
The nine defendants, including fathers, workers and students, said they paid smugglers or their associates 140,000 to 150,000 Egyptian pounds ($4,500 to $4,900) to board the fateful ship.
“I tell you, I am the one who paid 140,000 Egyptian pounds,” said one of the defendants, Magdy*. “If I were the guy who put these people on the boat, I'd have about 7, 8, 9,000 euros. 20,000 euros. Why on earth would I be on a boat like this?”
In 2022, a smuggler told the Guardian that he had charged Egyptians about 120,000 Egyptian pounds (about 3,90,000 yen). A recent report found that travelers from Syria often pay around 6,000 euros (approximately $6,500) for such trips.
The other two survivors, both Syrians, said they had paid people but not the Egyptians accused. The nine people detained were not involved in smuggling.
“No. They had no responsibility,” said Ahmed*.
On that fateful day last year, June 14, the Adriana, carrying an estimated 700 to 750 people, including Egyptians, Syrians, Pakistanis, Afghans and Palestinians, capsized. Children were among them. The derelict blue trawler had left Libya five days earlier.
Only 84 bodies were found and 104 people on board were rescued, meaning hundreds died in one of the worst refugee boat disasters ever recorded in the Mediterranean.
Human rights groups, activists and some survivors say Greek coast guard personnel failed in their duty to save lives at sea.
Mr Ahmed said he saw nine suspects during the chaos, which threatened to capsize the ship, and passengers began running around in panic.
“They were just directing people when our ship started to list. They were yelling at people to steady the ship,” he said.
Seven of the defendants claim they witnessed a Coast Guard patrol boat tying a rope to a fishing trawler. The ship capsized in the Mediterranean Sea after Greek authorities pulled it once and twice.
“I saw a Greek boat with a thick blue rope, one rope tied to the center of the boat,” said Fathy, another defendant. “They pulled the boat, saw the boat tip sideways, tilted, and kept going, so the boat flipped over.”
“Greece, Greek ships towed us, capsized us, killed our brothers and friends. Now when I look back at myself, I am in prison.”
Two of the accused, who were in the hold of the ship, said they did not understand what had happened until they boarded a Greek coast guard boat after the disaster occurred.
Two Syrian survivors told Al Jazeera that they saw the Greek coast guard towing the fishing trawler away.
“They had nothing to do with the sinking of the ship. That's clear,” Mohammad* said of the detained Egyptians.
“It has to be logical. It was a big ship, so it wouldn't have sunk if no one had intervened. The engine was broken, but it could have stayed afloat. He is truly responsible for the sinking.”
The Greek Coast Guard denied the allegations, insisting it “absolutely respects human life and human rights.”
“However, appropriate control mechanisms shall be put in place as necessary, in cooperation with legal authorities and other relevant institutions,” the statement to Al Jazeera said.
Initially, the Coast Guard did not mention the rope incident in an official statement, and spokesman Nikos Alexiou denied the rope report.
But as survivors' testimonies mounted, Alexiou later said in a statement that the two boats were “tied with ropes to prevent them from drifting adrift.”
The ongoing investigation at the Naval Court in Kalamata aims to determine whether the Greek coast guard conducted the search and rescue properly.
A recent Frontex incident report on the Pylos sinking said: “Greek authorities appear to have been unable to declare a timely search and rescue operation and deploy sufficient numbers and appropriate equipment to rescue the migrants in time.” .
No start date has been set for the trial of the nine defendants, but according to Greek law it should begin within 18 months of their initial detention. If the men are convicted, they could face decades in prison.
“After I signed, he hit me.”
The nine people said they gave statements at Kalamata Police Station the day after the wreck under threat. They say they were pressured to sign documents in Greek they did not understand.
The two men said they were punched and kicked by police officers and interpreters who were present during the interrogation.
Saber* said he was given a document in Greek but expressed that he did not want to sign it.
“[The interpreter] He said he would sign next to my signature. “It's like nothing happened,” he said. “After I signed, he hit me.”
Saber* said he saw police kicking another defendant in the chest.
Greek police did not respond to requests for comment on these allegations.
Greece has long been accused by human rights groups of unfairly accusing and sentencing innocent people for smuggling.
Defense lawyer Dimitris Choulis, who has worked on similar cases for years with the Samos Human Rights Law Project, sees the episode as another example of the “criminalization of refugees.”
“We're seeing the same pattern, as well as the authorities' unwillingness to investigate what actually happened,” Chouris told Al Jazeera.
A 2021 report by the German charity Border Watch found at least 48 cases of people serving sentences on the islands of Chios and Lesbos alone for “not receiving any profits from the smuggling industry.”
Cholis said smuggling trials used to last as little as 20 minutes and resulted in sentences of 50 years in prison.
This is in line with reports from monitoring groups such as Borderline Europe that the smuggling trial in Greece was rushed and “was decided on the basis of limited and dubious evidence”.
The Lesbos Legal Center, which is also working on the defense of the nine Egyptians, said the investigative file was based “almost exclusively” on a small number of statements taken in “suspicious circumstances” and lamented the severe lack of evidence. Ta.
Additionally, Al Jazeera has leaked leaks from the lawsuit, including a complaint filed by the defendants' lawyers that expert reports from marine engineers and naval mechanical engineers ordered as part of the investigation used minimal evidence. The documents were examined. 3 photos, 2 videos, and 1 email. The report did not account for the capsizing and sinking of the vessel, the complaint said.
The defense further questioned the impartiality of the appointed expert and said that procedures regarding how the defendant was notified of this expert report were not followed.
Al Jazeera reviewed the responses. Kalamata prosecutors dismissed the charges, arguing that further expert reports were unnecessary and that the process had in fact been carried out correctly.
“I strongly believe that the Greek coast guard caused the shipwreck,” Choulis said. “And the Greek Coast Guard has carried out all preliminary investigations into this incident and has ordered marine engineers to conduct an analysis. I think the issue here is clear.”
Four of the men charged were said to have given water to people sitting next to them.
Cholis explained that in previous human trafficking cases, giving water to people was considered smuggling.
“Authorities are discouraging people from providing water, distributing food, possessing phones, taking videos, checking GPS, contacting authorities, and tying ropes to tow rescue boats. I've seen them make accusations, and the same goes for Pyrrhus, etc.”
Gamal* doesn't understand how giving someone water can be considered smuggling.
“Of course, if you had a bottle of water in your hand and there was someone next to you who was dying of thirst, you would give them water, right?” he said from prison. “No. Here, this is considered human trafficking.”
