Solidarité sans frontières – News Aggregator BETA

The first of 30 detention centers for undocumented immigrants that the government is planning to open over the next two years is to be located in the administrative region of Attica (the area around Athens). According to government officials it will be located in the deserted Air Force camp in Katsimidi, near Mount Parnitha, north of Athens.

One more immigrant corpse was found on Thursday afternoon in the region of Evros. The immigrant was found dead in the fields of the village Tychero, near Alexandroupolis. He was 20 to 30 years old. Two days ago another immigrant, 25 to 30 years old, was found dead near the village of Nea Vissa, close to the town of Orestiada. The last 2 years more than 80 immigrants have died in Evros.

Yesterday, Monday March 19, the Minister of Citizen Protection Michalis Chrisochoidis announced in the Greek Cabinet that a new immigrants’ detention camp will be created in Kozani. The camp will be under the authority of Greek police and will be located in a former military base. The camp’s capacity will be 1,000 inmates. This will be the first official detention camp in Greece.

On the morning of February 21, 2012, in the rural area near the village Amorion (Orestiada) another corpse was discovered. The dead immigrant was a woman of African origin, aged 18-25 years. The immigrant died because of bad weather, while trying to enter the “European dream” from Turkey, via the river Evros. On February 1, 2012 another African woman was found dead near river Evros, in the area of Tychero village this time.

Construction of a fence along the Evros River on the Greek-Turkish border officially commenced on Monday, budgeted at 3,162.5 million euros, is due for completion in late August or early September.

After an anonymous phone call made to an Afghan family in Afghanistan, policemen found the corpses of three Afghan immigrants thrown in a deserted area outside Parga (West Greece). Someone anonymously called from Athens and told the Afghan family that strangers threw the dead bodies of three Afghans behind a gas station on the Preveza – Igoumenitsa highway.

An immigrant died of hypothermia while 14 others were rescued. The 15 migrants were trying to cross river Evros from Turkey to Greece, and were trapped in an island on the Evros river near Tychero village. Seven of the survivors are nationals of Eritrea, two are Palestinian nationals, three are from Algeria, one from Syria and one from Bangladesh. The dead immigrant was also Palestinian. He was transferred in critical condition at the Medical Center of Feres, where he died of hypothermia.

A 9-year-old girl and her grandfather have gone missing in their effort to cross the freezing Evros river from Turkey to Greece on a boat (with another nine sans papiers immigrants) which was overturned Meanwhile, a boy of 3, child of sans papiers immigrants, was saved and is being kept at the University Hospital of Alexandroupolis. The boy is in a very good condition. The boy had been saved by a sans papiers immigrant and his compatriot, both of whom were arrested by the police in Orestiada.

In the Chamber judgment of January 17, 2012, in the case Zontul v. Greece, the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights. The applicant, Necati Zontul, is a Turkish national who was born in 1968 and lives in London (United Kingdom). On 27 May 2001 he and 164 other migrants boarded a boat in Istanbul which was bound for Italy.

Two plastic boats, loaded with sans-papiers immigrants trying to cross Evros river, capsized early today morning. Up to now, rescue teams have discovered 6 immigrants. The rescued immigrants are two Afghans from the one boat (on which 4 more were aboard)  and 4 nationals of Bangladesh who, along with two other compatriots tried to cross the river Evros, but without success, as their boat also overturned.