Nor did they make any other attempts to ensure that pushback orders by the Frontex command would not occur again. Frontex officials didn’t check the command structures, and didn’t ask why no internal report had been filed regarding the illegal order. It was not even brought up at the daily coordination meeting attended by officers involved in the Frontex mission in Greece.Īccording to Frontex, there is no further follow-up about the incident in their files. Just four hours after the incident happened, Frontex officials came to the conclusion that the explicit order to violate international law had just been an “isolated incident”. It is remarkable how the Frontex headquarters handled the information around the pushback order: It simply closed the files. Human rights violations reviewed in four hours In the afternoon, she was informed that Frontex had indeed been been involved in attempted pushback. On the morning of 6 March, in anticipation of press inquiries, the Frontex spokeswoman asked her colleagues for an account of the incident. Only when various media outlets made the incident public, Frontex acknowledged internally it had been involved in an attempted violation of human rights.ĭespite the seriousness of the incident, Frontex officials never filed a so-called Serious Incident Report. E-mails exchanged at the Frontex headquarters in Warsaw, which we publish today, show that the pushback order hardly interested Frontex decision makers. The Danish commander of the ship, however, refused the illegal order and managed, through his Danish superiors, to have it reversed.įrontex had never publicly admitted the incident before. The Greek command in Frontex’s Operation Poseidon ordered a ship of the Danish Marine called “Stela Polaris“ not to bring the refugees it had just rescued ashore, but to put them back into the rubber boat and tow them back into Turkish waters.
On March 2, Frontex tried to push back to Turkey a boat with 33 refugees who had just reached Greek waters near the island of Kos.
EU Observer first reported about the documents. However, internal e-mails from Frontex we received by Freedom of Information request, now show that the EU agency has no interest in investigating comparable human rights violations. “Any allegation of misconduct or infringement of international treaties or fundamental rights in the framework of joint operations coordinated by Frontex is treated with grave concern and carefully investigated.“įrontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri The EU agency would investigate the accusations that Frontex had expelled fugitives from the EU in violation of European and international law. When several media revealed three weeks ago that the European Border Police Frontex is involved in illegal pushbacks at EU borders, Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri promised a quick investigation.
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