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DE RUEHTH #1387/01 2760539
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FM AMEMBASSY ATHENS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 2582
INFO RUEHZG/NATO EU COLLECTIVE
RUEHGB/AMEMBASSY BAGHDAD 0096
RUEHBUL/AMEMBASSY KABUL 0419
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC
RHMFISS/COMDT COGARD WASHINGTON DC
RUEKJCS/CJCS WASHINGTON DC

C O N F I D E N T I A L ATHENS 001387 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/25/2018 
TAGS: PRL PGOV PBTS PTER PHUM GR
SUBJECT: GREEK SLANDS: A GATEWAY TO EUROPE FOR ILLEGAL 
MIGRANTS 
 
REF: A. ATHENS 1270 
     ¶B. ATHENS 920 
     ¶C. ATHENS 260 
     ¶D. 07 ATHENS 2305 
 
Classified By: A/DCM Timothy Haley for reasons 1.4(b and d). 
 
Summary 
------- 
¶1. (SBU) ver-increasing numbers of illegal immigrants 
Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, and ohers) are 
using boats and rafts to travel fro Turkey to Greek islands 
in the Aegean Sea, making the islands the preferred route for 
these immigrants into the EU.  The wave of newcomers has all 
but overwhelmed the local Greek autorities charged with 
detaining and fingerprinting the immigrants, and then housing 
them in holding facilities until they are released.  We 
visited one new holding center on the island o Samos; it is 
one of only two in Greece that UNHCR sees as meeting 
international standard, and even it is at double its 
capacity becaue of the influx.  Despite a bilateral 
agreement on the return of aliens who entered from Turkey, 
Greek officials universally assert that Turkey has been able 
to avoid taking back more than a small handful of the 
migrants.  Greek officials on the islands release the aliens 
as soon as procedures permit (anywhere from a few days to 
three months after they are detained) and give them a ferry 
ticket to the Greek mainland and a letter instructing them to 
leave Greece within 30 days.  Once on the mainland, they 
attempt to stow away on ferries to Italy and other European 
countries where they have a better chance of receiving asylum 
than in Greece.  Everyone agrees it is not a satisfactory 
system -- either in terms of the aliens' well-being or in 
terms of effective border control that would screen for 
terrorists or criminals -- but the combination of EU 
regulations, various states' laws, and the unwillingness of 
Turkey to accept the return of the immigrants has left Greek 
officials unable to find an alternative.  End Summary. 
 
Local Officials' Summer of Discontent 
------------------------------------- 
¶2. (SBU) The UNHCR Head of Office in Athens, Giorgos 
Tsarbopoulos, told us September 2 that while the number of 
illegal migrants tring to enter Europe at two other 
traditional lcations -- the Canary Islands (Spain) and 
Lampedusa (Italy) -- was declining, the number etering 
through Greek islands had been growingdramatically for at 
least two years, indicatig that for alien smugglers Greece 
is now the "ain route" into Europe.  The result, 
Tsarbopolos said, was a "very alarming situation" in which 
all detention centers are overcrowded and resource-strapped 
local authorities come under tremendous pressure.  He said 
there were now two centers that meet international standards, 
on the islands of Samos and Evros, with a third on the 
mainland in Sparta set to open soon.  Even these, however, 
are already overcrowded, and many older, substandard centers 
continue to operate.  (Note: Greece has repeatedly come under 
sharp criticism from EU officials, UNHCR, human rights NGOs, 
and others for poor conditions in the detention centers, 
including the former facility in Samos, which was closed in 
¶2007.  See ref C.  End Note.) 
 
¶3. (SBU) Local officials throughout the Aegean have been 
outspoken about the worsening situation, and have made 
pointed pleas to the central government for help.  To take 
some examples from news reports in September alone:  Samos 
officials issued an urgent plea for help in dealing with the 
deluge of immigrants "suffocating" the island, asking for 
support for lawyers, translators, and other professionals. 
Hotel owners in Patmos have protested against the hundreds of 
migrants on their island, and local citizens are reportedly 
acting as "civil guards" to prevent migrants from entering 
certain resorts there.  Officials in the Dodecanese islands 
have issued a written plea to Athens for help dealing with 
the "desperate" situation there.  In early September 
residents on the island of Agathonisi (permanent population 
150) protested the arrival of 570 migrants in a single 
five-day period, and the arrival of almost 3,500 since the 
start of the year.  UNHCR's Tsarbopoulos told us that local 
prefects representing both ruling and opposition parties (for 
example, those in Samos and Lesvos) see the problem in 
exactly the same way. 
 
¶4. (C) Greek Coast Guard Security Directorate Commander 
Yannis Chortis shared with us September 30 statistics that 
quantified the surge.  From 2002 to 2006, the Coast Guard 
 
detained a fairly steady number of migrants at sea, between 
2,000 and 4,000 per year.  In 2007, the number shot up to 
9,240, and the 2008 totals had already reached 10,514 as of 
September 28.  (The numbers do not include immigrants 
detained by the police or other agencies on land.)  There 
were similar increases in the number of alien smugglers 
arrested and boats confiscated.  Chortis said the vast 
majority of these migrants traveled to Greece from Turkey, 
although there were also smuggling routes from Egypt. 
 
An Island at the Edge of Europe 
------------------------------- 
¶5. (SBU) We visited the island of Samos September 24, and met 
with leading local officials and law enforcement.  Samos is 
only about one mile from the Turkish coast, and while the 
towns and beaches were still full of late-season European 
tourists, it was easy to spot some of the islands' other 
(less welcome) visitors walking along the waterfront in the 
town of Samos.  We witnessed a table full of locals at a 
seaside cafe calling out to a nearby Coast Guard vehicle -- 
"Did you see them?  They went that way" -- after two 
suspected migrants limped past; in this case the Coast Guard, 
whose jurisdiction is limited to the waters and the port, did 
not pursue.  Everyone we met stressed to us that islanders 
are sympathetic to the migrants, in part because Greeks have 
their own experience of being refugees, but the burden of 
such a large number of aliens on the small island communities 
was creating social tensions. 
 
¶6. (C) Samos Prefect Emmanouel Karlas, the highest official 
on Samos and several nearby islands, described the situation 
to us as "unprecedented" and "nregulated," and expressed 
fears that it was only going to get worse.  A doctor himself, 
Karlas said the immigrants were "potential time bombs" for 
pandemic diseases with long incubation periods that medical 
checks on the island could not screen for.  Deputy Prefect 
Stylianos Thanos said the island's new "reception center" for 
the migrants was a great improvement, but it had a downside: 
more immigrants chose to go to Samos because of the better 
accommodations, and officials on some other islands have 
complained that their own immigrants should be sent there. 
Thanos said the local government appeals to Athens on a daily 
basis for more resources. 
 
¶7. (C) Coast Guard Deputy Harbormaster Lieutenant George 
Psarakis told us the Coast Guard patrols the sea around the 
island only at night, and has only one or at most two boats 
available at any given time.  He said the aliens come in 
inflatable rafts through treacherous waters north or south of 
the island; they do not come from the east -- the closest 
point to Turkey -- because that area is a Turkish "national 
park" with Turkish military patrols that deter smugglers. 
Psarakis said it takes Coast Guard boats an hour to get from 
one side of the island to the other, and each incident with 
aliens consumes two to three hours out of the patrol.  Given 
these resource constraints, many of the immigrants make it to 
the island.  Others, sometimes over 100 a night, are 
intercepted at sea, but even they end up on Samos, because 
they intentionally destroy their rafts so that the Greek 
Coast Guard will be compelled to rescue them.  Psarakis 
expressed confidence that all immigrants to Samos are 
detained, if not by the Coast Guard at sea then by the police 
on land.  Others we talked to, including Mayor Filippos 
Petrouskas, were not so sure.  Petrouskas told us that during 
the previous week ten migrants had camped out in a park 
outside city hall; when he asked them to leave, he said they 
begged to be arrested. 
 
What Awaits an Illegal Migrant 
------------------------------ 
¶8. (C) As explained to us by Samos Deputy Police Director 
Panayotis Kordousis, when police detain a migrant they first 
take him or her to the hospital for a medical exam, then to 
the new detention center on the hill above Samos town.  There 
the migrants are fingerprinted and housed for a period of 
time -- from a few days to three months -- depending on their 
stated country of origin.  Since most of the migrants 
understand the rules and have destroyed their travel 
documents before being detained, Kordousis said, they 
naturally tend to claim citizenship in those countries with a 
shorter period of detention.  Kordousis said the fingerprints 
are entered in a database and checked against INTERPOL 
records, but he did not rule out the possibility that many of 
the immigrants might be released before local authorities 
were notified of any INTERPOL "hits" on the fingerprints.  He 
said there was a risk of terrorists entering Europe in this 
 
wave of immigrants; noting that a two-time illegal immigrant 
had killed a famous actor in Athens, Kordousis asked us to 
"imagine if that had been a terrorist." 
 
¶9. (SBU) Police escorted us to the outer fence of the 
detention facility, where we witnessed local police and 
prefecture employees providing food and other services to a 
large number of detainees of both genders, most of them young 
and many with children.  The facility consisted of a number 
of trailers, with one in front serving as a cafeteria, and 
near the front was a well-equipped playground and basketball 
court.  We saw new arrivals being issued large sacks 
containing a mattress and other items, which they carried up 
to the living quarters.  Because the center is at 
approximately double its capacity of 250, many of these 
mattresses will be placed on the floor. 
 
¶10. (SBU) Upon completing the required term in the detention 
center, the aliens are then released with a ferry ticket to a 
port on the Greek mainland, and a letter instructing them to 
leave the country within a month.  The Coast Guard told us 
they monitor the outgoing ferries, to ensure that only those 
aliens who have gone through the legal process board them. 
The police agreed that it would be difficult to leave on a 
ferry without documents, although Mayor Petrouskas told us he 
thought it was possible.  At the mainland port of Patras, 
many aliens live in shanties while they await their chance to 
stow away on ferries to Italy and elsewhere.  (Comment: The 
Greeks of course have some incentive to look the other way as 
the immigrants leave and move the problem on to another 
jurisdiction.  End Comment.)  Few aliens seek asylum in 
Greece, where asylum approval rates are extremely low.  As 
Greek officials explained, however, under the provisions of 
the Dublin Agreement other EU countries can return to Greece 
any illegal aliens found in other countries who can be traced 
to Greece.  In some cases, courts in Europe have begun 
refusing to do so because of Greece's low rate of granting 
asylum. 
 
The Role of Turkey 
------------------ 
¶11. (C) Everyone we met in Samos -- including the Prefect and 
Deputy Prefect, who were otherwise at pains to stress their 
good relations with Turkish officials -- said a major part of 
the problem was Turkey's failure to prevent the aliens from 
embarking and Turkey's unwillingness to accept practically 
any of them back, despite Turkey having signed a bilateral 
agreement on return.  Greek Foreign Minister Bakoyannis has 
raised Turkey's commitments under the agreement with Turkish 
Foreign Minister Babacan (ref D).  Psarakis said that when 
the Greek Coast Guard sees a raft of immigrants in Turkish 
waters, its first action is to try to notify the Turkish 
Coast Guard; he said the Turks respond "two times out of 
ten."  Psarakis said the Greeks then stop the raft at the 
borderline while continuing to try to contact the Turks, but 
this almost always fails because the aliens destroy the raft 
to force the Greeks to rescue them.  He said the Greeks had 
evidence of Turkish complicity in transporting the migrants, 
referring to a recent controversy in which the Turkish Coast 
Guard allegedly dumped aliens in Greek waters, and in other 
cases allegedly towed rafts full of migrants to the Greek 
side (ref A).  The Coast Guard's Chortis expressed some 
sympathy for the immigration challenge facing Turkish 
officials -- calling it even more difficult than the Greeks' 
-- but he said the vast numbers of smuggling networks coming 
from Turkey (some using motorboats and quite sophisticated 
techniques) suggested police corruption in Turkey was a major 
part of the problem. 
 
Comment 
------- 
¶12. (C) Illegal immigration has been a problem in Greece for 
a number of years -- along Greece's northern border as well 
as in the islands -- but the dimensions of the problem in the 
islands have exploded over the last couple of years.  This 
has produced considerable finger-pointing, with some EU 
bodies and international NGOs criticizing the Greeks for 
failing to meet basic requirements in caring for the 
immigrants, and local officials in turn blaming Athens and 
the EU for not giving them the resources to deal with the 
problem.  Although no one seems to have a solution, Greek 
officials at both the national and local levels acknowledge 
the dangers of the status quo.  Deputy Minister of Merchant 
Marine Panagiotis Kammenos, who is responsible for the Coast 
Guard, told DCM September 17 that he thought both domestic 
and transnational terrorist groups could make use of the wave 
 
of immigrants entering the EU through Greece.  The dangers of 
contraband smuggling, human trafficking, and other kinds of 
transnational crime are also obvious, and the consequences of 
the problem could be felt well beyond Greece.  In order to 
help address the problem, Embassy DAO and ODC are currently 
working with the Greek Coast Guard to help them procure 
better ships, aircraft, and surveillance systems, so that 
they are on par with the systems now in use by Spain and 
Italy, where the number of immigrants has declined. 
Nevertheless, it is clear that Europe faces a major challenge 
in securing its borders, and the Greek islands appear to be 
its most vulnerable spot. 
 
SPECKHARD