ATHENS— For ten years, a naval court in Greece charges seventeen coastguards over the worst migrant boat tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea.
Early hours of 14 June 2023 saw the sinking of the packed Adriana fishing vessel at Pylos, off the Greek coast, feared to have drowned up to 650 people.
Later, survivors informed the BBC that Greek coastguards had hushed witnesses and caused their boat to capsize in an effort at tow gone wrong.
“It has taken us two years just for these charges to come, even though so many people witnessed what happened,” one of the survivors, a Syrian man we dubbed Ahmad, said on Monday.
The Greek officials have always refuted the accusations directed against them.
According to the Piraeus Naval Court’s Deputy Prosecutor, 17 Hellenic Coast Guard members ought to be charged criminally.
Among them is the LS-920 coastguard ship’s commander, charged with “causing a shipwreck,” which results in “at least 82 people” dead.
This relates to the total number of dead retrieved; although it is believed that an extra 500 people drowned, including women and children below deck.
Before it sank, a coastguard ship watched the Adriana for fifteen hours.
With an expected 750 passengers, it had left Libya for Italy. Of them just 104 are known to have survived.
Since the day the disaster struck, we have been researching; our results seriously challenge the official Greek account of events.
We gathered shipping records within a week that refuted the assertion the migrant boat had not been in difficulty and so did not need to be rescued.
A month later, survivors said us the coastguard had ordered witnesses to remain silent after causing their boat to drown in a catastrophic attempt to tow it.
