They threw him in... his hand slipped under & the sea engulfed him

Horror claims of coastguard boats involved in drownings

- MATTHEW YOUNG

SHOCKING claims of how Greek authorities treat refugees include migrants being thrown into the sea from coastguard boats and children being dumped in dinghies on the open sea.

An investigation by the BBC has obtained footage from an aid worker who caught the moment refugees including women and babies - were put into EU-funded boats by masked men and driven out into the Aegean Sea from the Greek island of Lesbos.

They were abandoned in a dinghy in Turkish waters in April last year.

Analysis has also uncovered allegations the Greek coastguard is linked to the deaths of 43 migrants between 2020 and 2023, including nine people thrown into the sea.

One migrant named Ibrahim describes how he got a visa from Cameroon to Turkey before he arrived in Greece in September 2021.

"Just as we docked, the police started shooting," he tells the documentary. Ibrahim says there were two officers dressed in black and three others in civilian clothes, and that they were all masked.

They were strip-searched and beaten before he and two others another Cameroonian and a man from Ivory Coast - were taken on to a coastguard boat, he claims.

SURVIVE

"They started with the Cameroonian," he recalls. "They threw him in the water. The Ivorian said, 'Save me, I don't want to die. Save me.

"Only his hand was above the water. Slowly his hand slipped under and the water engulfed him."