A distressing footage by Sky News shows the rescue operation of an NGO when a boat carrying refugees to Greece capsizes off Agathonisi island in the Eastern Aegean Sea. While rescuers pulled the freezing refugees from the cold waters, for three children any help comes too late.
Dramatic are the scenes as the parents awaiting for the doctors to give them a sign of hope – a sign that does not come.
Among the crowd is also the trafficker, a Turkish man in his twenties.
Sky News reports that when the Greek Coast Guard went on rescue boat, it forced the trafficker to take a look at the drowned children.
“We watched Oskart as Greek police forced him to kneel before the body bags of the children – a little girl aged four and two two-year-old boys – on the deck of a ship transferring him and the survivors to Samos,” Sky News reports and tells the story:
“Police boarded the boat in Samos to arrest the driver.
But before taking him away they dragged him towards the bodybags of the youngsters shouting ‘look’.
He was forced to kneel – just metres from the children.
After a while he looked down, not wanting to look anymore.
But after seeing a sobbing father identify his two-year-old son, Oskart broke down himself.”
The boat was carrying 12 men, 5 women and 6 children, the Turkish trafficker admitted he had never driven a boat before. He faces charges on manslaughter.
Video – Warning – graphic footage of dead children
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YouTube Direkt
The Coast Guard behavior has triggered an outrage.
Greek media report that the Greek Coast Guard plans to publish a press release saying that the Cost Guard members were forcing the boat driver to identify the children as part of the people he was illegally taking from Turkey to Greece.
PS based on the footage, I see the Coast Guard telling the man just “Look!”
