Greek Ombudsman Calls for Investigation into Coast Guard Officers After Migrant Shipwreck

Greece's government ombudsman has completed an inquiry into a disastrous migrant shipwreck off Pylos in 2023, and has recommended a disciplinary investigation for eight senior officers of the Hellenic Coast Guard.

On June 10, 2023, the aging trawler Adriana got under way from Libya, bound for Italy with an estimated 400-750 irregular migrants on board. The overloaded fishing vessel entered the Greek search and rescue zone on June 13, and the Hellenic Coast Guard dispatched patrol vessel PPLS-920 to the scene.

The patrol boat's actions after that point were disputed, but on June 14, the fishing vessel sank. 82 bodies were recovered, 104 survivors were saved, and up to 500 people were presumed dead.

At the time of the sinking, PPLS-920 was the only vessel on scene. The Hellenic Coast Guard maintains that Adriana refused assistance, and that the overloaded boat capsized due to the movement of hundreds of passengers.

However, multiple survivors accused the coast guard response boat crew of attempting to conduct a tow before the Adriana sank, a charge the agency firmly denies.

"The third time they towed us, the boat swayed to [starboard] and everyone was screaming, people began falling into the sea, and the boat capsized and no one saw anyone anymore," one survivor told CNN. "If they had left us be, we wouldn't have drowned."

A second man asserted that "the Greek captain pulled us too fast, it was extremely fast, this caused our boat to sink."

Multiple inquiries by reputable news organizations, including BBC and NDR, found evidence that PPLS-920 may have contributed to the capsizing while attempting to tow the Adriana. After these reports, Greece's ombudsman called for the coast guard to launch an internal disciplinary investigation into the cause of the capsizing, but the agency refused.

Ombudsman Andreas Pottakis followed up with his own independent investigation. After collecting 5,000 pages of testimony and documentary evidence, Pottakis' team found "clear indications" that eight senior Hellenic Coast Guard officers had "disregarded the risk to the life, health and physical integrity of the foreign nationals on board the fishing vessel Adriana," thereby exposing the passengers to danger per article 306 of Greece's Criminal Code.

Pottakis said that evidence from the incident had been either withheld or not provided for the inquiry, including phone call audio with the Adriana's captain and video recordings from PPLS-920's cameras, which the Hellenic Coast Guard asserted were out of order at the time.

The ombudsman has forwarded his conclusions to the Prosecution Authority of the Piraeus Maritime Court and to the Ministry of Shipping. He called for a full inquiry, saying that the "transparency of administrative action and the attribution of responsibilities, where they exist, for the Pylos shipwreck with many fatalities is an elementary constitutional demand."