Bassel M. has tried nine times in vain to get from Turkey to Greece.
He claims to have been threatened and abused by Greek border guards.
On his tenth attempt, he decided to join forces with his tormentors.
A man in his late twenties who fled Syria, Bassel M. had just crossed the Evros River on the Turkish-Greek border in an inflatable boat together with other asylum-seekers at the end of 2020 when Greek security forces intercepted the group.
The Syrian claims that the officers beat the refugees and then hauled them off in a car without license plates to a police station in the border town of Tychero.
Bassel M. claims the refugees were ordered to strip and that police took their phones away before locking them in a cell together with 150 other prisoners.
An Unusual Offer
A police officer questioned Bassel M. and, the Syrian says, accused him of being the leader of a smuggling gang because he spoke English.
The officer threatened him with a prison sentence, but then reversed course and made an unusual offer: The Syrian could work for the Greek police by helping the border guards in Tychero get refugees back to Turkey.
In exchange, the authorities would not pursue charges for alleged human trafficking and would issue him a 30-day residence permit.
The Syrian found himself facing one of the most difficult decisions of his life: Should he work together with Greek security forces who imprison refugees like himself, torture them and drag them back to Turkey?
Or should he risk disappearing for years into a Greek prison?
Bassel M. decided to cooperate with the police.
The Syrian apparently isn't the only refugee to have been recruited in this fashion by Greek officials.
Joint reporting by DER SPIEGEL, the media organization Lighthouse Reports, German public broadcaster ARD's "Report München" and the newspapers
Le Monde
and the
Guardian
, has revealed that the Greek police are deliberately using migrants as their proxies in illegal pushbacks.
Proxies in illegal pushbacks
Rumors of the practice have persisted for years.
Hundreds of pushback victims have told stories of being dragged back across the border by other migrants who spoke Arabic or Farsi.
With assistance from the NGO Consolidated Rescue Group, the team of reporters managed to speak to six of these men for the first time after months of research.
They independently admitted to having been forced into participating in pushbacks to Turkey.
The information they have provided can be corroborated with the help of photos, satellite images and official Greek documents.
Residents of Greek villages located near the border report that it is an "open secret" in the region that refugees carry out pushbacks as proxies for the police.
Farmers and fishermen who are allowed to enter the restricted area of the Evros River have repeatedly observed refugees performing such work.
Migrants are not seen on this stretch of the Evros, said one local resident.
"Except those who work for the police."
Three Greek police officers familiar with events also confirmed the practice to DER SPIEGEL and its partners.
The Greek Interior Ministry and police did not answer requests for comment by publication time on Tuesday.
Under European law, Greece is required to provide asylum procedures to people seeking protection who reach Greek territory.
But the government in Greece, like other EU member states, has been flouting this law for years.
The fact that the authorities now appear to be using third-country nationals as proxies in pushbacks represents a new dimension of the brutality.
"This practice is a breach of all the values we stand for in the European Union," says Luise Amtsberg, the German government's federal commissioner for human rights and humanitarian assistance.
"It would be difficult to surpass this approach in terms of debasement and brutality."
Bassel M. Claims He Watched as Victims Drowned
Bassel M. does not want to reveal his true name out of fear of reprisals.
He claims that officers gave him clothing they had previously taken from other refugees and that he was forced to wear a balaclava.
When he asked for a life jacket, they refused.
The actions consistently proceeded in the same manner: Under the cover of darkness, he says the Greek police would take him to the river, where he would have to inflate a rubber dinghy.
Under the watchful eye of Greek officials, he says he first had to bring rope to the Turkish side and attach it to a tree so that he could later use it to pull himself across.
Then he and three other migrants who had likewise been coerced into participation would ferry the refugees back across the Evros River against their will, 20 per trip, sometimes as many as 150 people a night.
Bassel M. claims that he witnessed refugees drowning in the Evros River.
He also describes how he once beat Afghans with a paddle after they attacked him.
He says he was ashamed afterwards and didn't speak to anyone for hours.
By his account, the authorities didn't pay Bassel M. for his work.
He says he was only given food at irregular intervals and that he wasn't allowed to leave the police station on his own.
Bassel M. claims he was beaten if he didn't carry out orders quickly enough.
"They turned me into a slave," he says.
Others forced to serve as proxies for the Greeks provided DER SPIEGEL and its partners with similar accounts of their experiences.
Sources within Greek agencies say that pushbacks intensified after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hauled thousands of migrants to the Greek border in the spring of 2020 to pressure the EU.
The police themselves considered the pushbacks to be so dangerous that they increasingly exploited refugees to conduct them in order to protect their own officers.
In recent years, there have been several exchanges of gunfire along the river border.
And in 2018, two Greek officers were arrested after straying onto the Turkish side of the Evros River.
A Syrian Named "Mike" Recruits New Proxies
Reporting conducted by DER SPIEGEL and its partners found that refugees are exploited as "slaves" by the security forces not only in Tychero, but in at least three police stations along the border river.
The station at Neo Cheimonio, located only a few kilometers away from the Evros River, is particularly notorious among refugees.
A Syrian who calls himself "Mike" is responsible for recruiting new proxies there.
Multiple sources who were able to view the police database say that "Mike" had been involved in smuggling and drug trafficking in his home city of Homs.
Now, according to three sources who worked under him in Neo Chemonio, he recruits asylum-seekers for pushbacks.
They all claim that they paid around 5,000 euros to a middleman in Istanbul and that, in exchange, they received the promise that they would only be held briefly at the Greek police station.
Only one of the three migrants knew beforehand that he was to perform illegal pushbacks.
Mike, the refugees claim, lived with them next to the police station in two white containers.
Local residents confirm this.
Photos obtained by DER SPIEGEL show him sitting in front of one of the containers.
He can be seen with his hair cropped short and wearing a camouflage uniform. One local resident also remembers him.
Mike declined to respond to questions from the team of reporters.
Arresting 400 traffickers
The refugees describe Mike as a violent man.
"He beat the refugees prior to the pushbacks," said one young Syrian.
"He told us to do the same so the Greeks would be happy with our work."
Officially, the Greek government does everything in its power to pursue traffickers.
It even boasts that it has already arrested more than 400 of them this year.
But Mike is apparently able to go about his work undisturbed in Neo Cheimonio.
The refugees all confirmed that Mike seems to have a good working relationship with the officers.
They claim that Mike, accompanied by Greek police officers, personally picks up new arrivals at the river who have paid in Istanbul.
They also allege that Mike regularly searched the asylum-seekers' backpacks for money and valuables.
The refugees claim he is allowed to keep what he finds.
It appears that Mike earns handsomely from human smuggling.
On TikTok, he and his wife brag about a house and a Mercedes in France.
In light of recent revelations, Bill Frelick, the refugee and migrant rights division director at Human Rights Watch, is calling on the European Commission to intervene.
The European Union supports Greece in securing its borders to the tune of hundreds of millions of euros annually.
Frelick says that Brussels and the governments of the EU member states can't look away as European law is brutally violated at the external borders.
So far, however, the European Commission has done just that.
Despite all the evidence, it hasn't initiated any infringement proceedings.
Bassel M. was released from service in Tychero after three months.
Another migrant took his place.
For his services, he received a temporary residence permit that has been viewed by DER SPIEGEL.
He used it to continue heading north.
The time spent in Tychero still weighs heavily on Bassel M. He hesitates when he talks about it.
"I didn't think anything like this was possible in Europe," he says.
Fact checking: Nikolai Antoniadis
Design: Lea Rossa, Niklas Marienhagen
3D model: Jack Sapoch;
reference material: Lena Karamanidou, Alexandros Avramidis
