GREEK ISLANDS: RESOURCES STRETCHED AS ILLEGAL

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 05 ATHENS 002204 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/12/2017 TAGS: PGOV PREL GR SUBJECT: GREEK ISLANDS: RESOURCES STRETCHED AS ILLEGAL MIGRANTS KEEP COMING Classified By: CHARGE TOM COUNTRYMAN. REASONS: 1.4 (b) and (d). SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (S) On October 28 and 29, poloff visited the eastern Aegean islands of Lesvos and Samos to discuss how authorities are handling the growing problem of illegal migrants. Officials on both islands (a) expressed concern that potential terrorists may be among the flood of economic migrants; (b) complained that Turkey needed to strengthen its borders, uphold its international obligations and to stop permitting aliens to flee towards Greece; and (c) urged the U.S. to pressure Turkey to take back aliens who reach Greek islands from Turkish shores. Poloff visited detention centers on both islands, as well as a new facility set to open within weeks on Samos. The conditions at the two centers currently in use varied from barely acceptable (Lesvos) to appalling (Samos); the new Samos center will bring an enormous improvement to the quality of life of detainees. Embassy is exploring specific ways in which the USG can provide assistance to the GoG, including provision of night-vision equipment, guidance in amending the Greek forfeiture law, and possible data sharing with the USG. While local officials' concern about a large influx of "Islamic fighters" is tough to assess (and possibly inflated to influence),we agree that there is a genuine threat. For that reason, Embassy continues working with the GOG on measures to ensure maximum interdiction capability and screening of illegal migrants. Ultimately, effective policing and detention will require greater resources from the GOG for local authorities. End Summary. LESVOS: A STONE,S THROW FROM TURKEY -------------- ¶2. (C) On October 28, poloff visited the Alien Detention Center of Mytilini on the island of Lesvos. Only six kilometers from the Turkish coast, the Coast Guard arrests hundreds of illegal immigrants each week in the waters that separate the island from Turkey. Officials estimated that approximately 40 to 50 new aliens arrived each day ) but 120 persons were brought in on a single day recently. The center held 372 persons on the day of our visit, having released 71 the day before. Of the 372, 81 were women and ten were children. The detention center resembled several airplane hangars under one roof, with bars on the front and back ends of the building. Young men are held in one hangar; women and children in another. Adult men are then separated into two facilities, one primarily for Africans and another primarily for Afghans. Two other metal containers are housing a mother and her children and an octogenarian and his two relatives. There are approximately five employees working at the center and all meals are catered, three times per day. PROCEDURES UPON ARRIVAL -------------- ¶3. (SBU) Local officials told poloff that, when apprehended, aliens are taken to the local hospital for a chest X-ray and a blood test. They are photographed and fingerprinted (including palms); details such as scars or tattoos are recorded. Aliens are then interrogated by specially trained officers and taken to the detention center. Under Greek law, aliens can be held for up to three months. If not deported within that time, the alien is freed with an order to depart Greece within 30 days. (Comment: Officials state that there is no follow-up to determine whether aliens released from detention with an order to depart the country actually do so. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most go to and remain in Athens. Those that do leave Greece for other parts of Europe do so freely, despite the Dublin II Agreement requiring the first European state into which a purported refugee enters the EU to be the state which processes the alien,s asylum claim. End comment.) ¶4. (SBU) In practice, on these small islands, aliens are held ATHENS 00002204 002 OF 005 for a far shorter period than three months due to space constraints in detention facilities. Unless deported, they are generally released within three to ten days. Local authorities provide a paid boat ticket to the Port of Piraeus (Athens). The ticket is paid by the Nomarch,s office, with funds from the Ministry of the Interior. Pregnant single women and women with children are released most quickly, often the same day of their apprehension. Pregnant women are allowed to remain in Greece until 6 months after the child is born. An NGO worker told poloff that she knows of approximately 15 African babies in Athens that have been abandoned by their mothers. WHO ARE THE MIGRANTS? -------------- ¶5. (C) According to police officers and NGO workers, most aliens are from Afghanistan and Somalia followed by Sudan and Iraq (mostly Iraqi Kurds). A nurse working with an NGO treating detainees said many Afghans claim to have fled Iran believing that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad intended to kill any Afghan found in Iran. (NOTE: While this perception may be exaggerated, Iran has dramatically stepped up efforts to deport illegal Afghan migrants in Iran since Spring 2007. End note.) Both police and NGO representatives said some detainees pretend to be from countries other than their own. Many claim to be Palestinians, believing this will increase their chances at gaining refugee status in Greece. Officials guestimated, that only one to five percent of them were actually Palestinian. &A SILENT ARMY OF ISLAM8 -------------- ¶6. (S) Both local officials and NGO workers repeatedly expressed concern that the influx masked an upsurge of &Islamic fighters.8 A nurse with the NGO Hellenic Rescue Team, (who has worked in both Afghanistan and Iraq and speaks a local Afghan dialect) reported that the number of "hardened extremists8 has increased dramatically since June ¶2007. The Chief of the Lesvos Harbor Police Captain Apostolos Mikromasteras (protect) said he was witnessing a &silent army of Islam8 pouring into Greece. When pressed on the numbers of refugees that might be terrorists, Mikromasteras speculated that it could be as high as 50 percent. (COMMENT: We believe this figure to be highly inflated. End comment.) When asked what is done with the aliens who are believed to be terrorists, Mikromasteras quietly admitted that they are taken back to Turkish shore on a boat they call the bus, and released there without the knowledge or the cooperation of the Turkish government. &If my Minister knew this, he would cut my head off,8 he confided. TURKEY NEEDS TO COOPERATE -------------- ¶7. (C) In a meeting in Lesvos with Hellenic Police General Vassilis Gatsas and Colonel Christos Despotellis, both urged the USG to bring pressure to bear on the GOT to stop collaborating with migrant smugglers, tighten its borders, pointing to the more than 35 dead bodies recovered in Lesvos and Samos in the past ten months. Many more, he feared, had drowned and never been recovered. He also explained that many of the aliens intentionally damage their own boats to force Coast Guard authorities to rescue them. Smugglers will also throw people overboard while being pursued in an effort to slow down the Coast Guard. Mikromasteras claimed, however, that not a single person has escaped his officers through this method and none had drowned. He added that many smugglers are now using boats with floating docks, allowing them to flood the back of a trawler or larger boat and release five or six migrant-laden vessels into the sea near the Greek coast. ATHENS 00002204 003 OF 005 FORFEITURE LAWS -------------- ¶8. (S) Mikromasteras believed that most of the migrant smugglers were Turkish citizens. Frequently, he said, smugglers fire upon Coast Guard officers or try to ram Coast Guard patrol boats with their bigger or faster smuggling vessels. Mikromasteras showed us more than 50 boats in Lesvos Harbor that had been seized and were waiting to be sold. (NOTE: Greek forfeiture laws do not permit the seizing agency to retain any of the funds from sold assets as is done in the United States. End note.) Mikromasteras commented that the most frequently used craft was the low-to-the-water, Turkish made MIR AI, an inflatable raft capable of carrying 25 people and equipped with electric motors to make detection by authorities more difficult. NEEDS OF THE SERVICE -------------- ¶9. (S) According to Mikromasteras, 75 percent of the boats making the four-mile dash from Turkey to Greece get turned back by authorities. But still the problem has grown steadily in the last year. In 2006, the total number of detained migrants on Lesvos was approximately 1700. Thus far in 2007, there have been more than 3570. To stem the flow, Mikromasteras used &a wall of boats8 -- three large boats (able to travel up to speeds of 51 MPH) and one fast boat (able to travel at speeds of up to 65 MPH). However, as the Harbor Master pointed out, more crew members were needed to operate the boats for more hours each night. His teams were also sorely in need of more night-vision devices as well as other electronic equipment. ¶10. (S) According to Mikromasteras, only five to ten percent of the aliens make it to shore without being intercepted. Most of those, he suggested, were ultimately caught as there was no way to leave the island without being checked by local authorities. Mikromasteras noted that he received calls from suspicious travel agents, amateur pilots and resident military officers when they spotted potential aliens. A MILLION MIGRANTS WAITING IN TURKEY? -------------- ¶11. (C) In later meetings with Nomarch Paulos Vogiatzis and human rights activist and medical worker Zoi Livaditou, both raised similar points: the need for better cooperation between the Turkish and Greek governments, and the presence of (they claimed) more than one million aliens waiting in Turkey for entry into Greece. Livaditou stated, &there are over 150,000 now in Ayvalik,8 which is a town in Turkey across from Lesvos. Both Livaditou and Vogiatzis cited a story last week by ALPHA television news journalist Spyros Lambros who illegally traveled to Turkey from Lesvos, purchased a small boat and returned to Greece with falsified documents. ¶12. (C) Livaditou said that Africans and Asians (whom she described as mostly Sri Lankan Tamils, Bangladeshis and Sudanese claiming to be Somalians) travel to Greece via Izmir, whereas Afghans generally go through Istanbul. Livaditou added that she has seen several women who were almost certainly victims of trafficking, one an Iranian and others who were Somalian. She said that both Athens and Thessaloniki desperately need a center for pregnant illegal migrants; since June 2007, 37 pregnant women have arrived. ¶13. (S) Livaditou also stated that since June there has been a marked increase in the number of &fighters of Islam.8 &I know,8 she said, eplaining that she had worked in both Afghanisan and Iraq and speaks a local Afghan dialect. She described the fighters, as usually wearing a cloth arm band or head band with a quote from the Koran. They were different, &more angry and not afraid like the other aliens.8 Livaditou said that many migrants already have ATHENS 00002204 004 OF 005 Greek cell phone chips and boat tickets to Piraeus when they land on Greek shores. In Turkey, she said, most of the agents working with smugglers are now Iranians. &A year ago we were full with Iranians,8 she told poloff, saying that there were over 400 who passed through the Greek detention center, but now there are not so many. The same was true of Algerians, she said, describing them as &real fanatics.8 SAMOS: NEW DETENTION CENTER TO OPEN ASAP -------------- ¶14. (C) On Samos, poloff again met with Police General Gatsas (who has jurisdiction for both Samos and Lesvos) and with Chief of Samos Police Panayiotis Tsiafidis (Chief on Samos for the past eleven years). In Samos, he said, they have arrested 35 Turkish traffickers in 2007; more than 30 dead bodies were recovered from the coastal waters. Like others, he also complained about Turkey's unwillingness to take back any of the migrants detained on Samos. ¶15. (SBU) Tsiafidis took poloff on a tour of the new detention center, scheduled to open imminently. The center sits on a remote hill overlooking Samos harbor and is accessed by a long stone road. The site, formerly a firing range for the Greek military, now holds 14 double-wide containers, 12 of which will be used to house aliens. Each container can support approximately 20-25 people. The capacity of the center will be 285 persons. There are 36 cameras placed around the perimeter of the facility which is bordered by two rows of hurricane fencing topped with barbed wire. There is additional fencing around the containers that will house women and children. Each container has three sinks, two toilets and two showers. In the living areas, there are two large windows and four small ones. There is an enclosed basketball court for use by adults and a playground area for use by children. There will be nine employees from the Nomarch,s office working at the facility including a doctor. Hot meals will be served three-times daily in a central cafeteria. Meals will be cooked elsewhere and delivered to the facility by a private caterer. ¶16. (C) Poloff next visited the current detention center on Samos, a former cigarette factory. Clearly overcrowded, hundreds of people were crammed into rooms far too small to hold them. In one room, 60 or 70 Afghan men were seated on the floor eating chicken and rice. Around the perimeter of the room were approximately 45 triple-level bunk beds. Poloff was told that there were not enough beds for each person and many were left to sleep on the floor or to sleep in shifts. Children were running barefoot through puddles of still water strewn with cigarette butts and other trash. There were gaping holes in the ceilings and walls throughout the building. In the room purportedly dedicated to women and children, there was barely a small path to pass through a sea of beds crammed one next to the other, wall-to-wall. Officials admitted that the center was an embarrassment to them. They added, however, that their resourcees were overwhelmed by the incessant wave of illegal migrants pouring onto their island and they were doing the best that they could. ¶17. (C) Samos Nomarch Emmanuel Karlas stressed the need to find ways for Greece and Turkey to cooperate. Karlas added that &Samos is small. We can,t handle more than 250 ) 280 detainees and we should be able to take aliens to other islands when we are over that number.8 He noted that many Greeks feel they are being unfairly burdened by this wave of immigrants. Funds spent on their needs meant postponing projects to upgrade local roads, schools, and hospitals. He pressed for U.S. pressure on Turkey to get them to accept migrant returns. COMMENT -------------- ¶18. (C) At least in the small islands of the eastern Aegean, Greece is being nearly overwhelmed by the perpetual flow of ATHENS 00002204 005 OF 005 illegal aliens onto its shores. There is little likelihood that the problem will abate in the near term. Possible U.S. assistance could include night-vision equipment for Coast Guard use on patrol boats and guidance on ways to restructure Greek forfeiture laws to permit more funds to go to cash-strapped law enforcement agencies. The Greek Coast Guard are also looking to procure long-range detection radars in order to locate boats well before they arrive in Greek waters so they can be returned. Direct discussion with Ankara is also essential as the two governments try to meet their international obligations for treatment of refugees and illegal migrants. We will encourage the GOG to reach out to Turkish authorities on this issue, and will explore creative methods to foster dialogue at the local level as well. ¶19. (S) (Comment continued) It is difficult to evaluate the extent to which Greek authorities' concern about a large-scale influx of "Islamic fighters" is justified. Certainly local authorities Samos and Lesvos believe it. Resource-poor, they are looking for assistance -- whether from the GOG, EU, or U.S. -- that may result in exaggerated numbers. However, entry into Europe by jihadists via small Greek islands like Samos is a genuine threat. Also worrying is the lack of follow-up once migrants are released from detention centers, with a ticket to Athens. Embassy is working with Greek authorities to ensure maximum effort is given to identifying known jihadists; we will also continue working with the Coast Guard and others on interdiction measures. However, effective policing and detention will require greater resources from the GOG for local authorities. COUNTRYMAN