Greek authorities have ordered the detention of a Moroccan suspected of piloting a boat that collided with a Greek coastguard vessel, leaving asylum seekers dead.
Questions are growing over late Tuesday’s deadly crash involving a coastguard patrol vessel and the high-speed migrant boat off the island of Chios, near the Turkish coast.
In addition to the 15 dead asylum seekers, 24 survivors, including the Moroccan, were admitted with injuries to hospital in Chios.
Late on Saturday, a Greek court ordered the Moroccan’s detention, which is expected to happen in the coming days.
He denies being at the helm of the migrant boat, the Greek press quoted his lawyers as saying.
Six injured children, some of them suffering from multiple fractures, were transferred to a paediatric hospital in Athens on Saturday.
The director of Chios hospital said most of those on board were Afghans.
The migration ministry has said the accident was caused by the boat attempting to evade the Greek authorities.
But Greek media and opposition parties have queried the details of the nighttime collision, and have questioned why the patrol boat’s thermal camera was not switched on.
None of the survivors have testified so far as to the circumstances of the crash.
Conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Sunday promised “absolute transparency” during the investigation into what caused the incident.
He condemned the “ruthless networks of smugglers of undocumented migrants, indifferent to human life” and praised the work of the coastguard in “protecting borders and saving human lives”.
Rights groups and international media have repeatedly accused Greece of illegally forcing would-be asylum seekers back into Turkish waters, backing their claims with video and witness testimonies.
Eighteen Greek coastguard members are being prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter due to negligence in the sinking of the trawler Adriana in June 2023.
The United Nations said around 750 people died in that tragedy – one of the worst migrant shipwrecks in the Mediterranean in the past decade.
Source: AFP