Greek authorities are facing fresh accusations of grave abuses at the EU’s external frontier, after an investigation revealed that police have been recruiting detained migrants to violently push asylum seekers back across the land border with Turkey .
According to the BBC , internal police records and witness testimony indicate that, since at least 2020, Greek officers have enlisted groups of migrants to operate as masked "mercenaries" carrying out illegal expulsions along the Evros river.
These men, often themselves arrested after irregularly crossing into Greece, were allegedly pressured into collaborating with the police in exchange for temporary protection from deportation or other benefits.
Testimonies gathered by journalists describe a pattern of systematic violence and humiliation.
Witnesses say masked units stripped new arrivals of their belongings and clothes, beat them, and forced them back towards Turkey on boats under cover of darkness. Some reported sexual violence and threats at gunpoint.
Mobile phones, money and documents were routinely confiscated, leaving people stranded and vulnerable on the Turkish side of the border.
The investigation suggests that this scheme was not the work of rogue officers but overseen by higher-ranking officials, with internal records allegedly showing recruitment orders and operational details.
These documents appear to confirm years of reports by rights groups and journalists that Greek forces have been outsourcing part of their border operations to foreign nationals, making abuses harder to trace back to state authorities.
Claims of masked “foreign men” involved in pushbacks in Greece first surfaced in 2022, when the Netherlands-based Lighthouse Reports documented testimonies from migrants who said they had been assaulted and expelled by non-Greek auxiliaries working with the authorities.
The new BBC findings build on that body of evidence, adding what appears to be internal Greek police documentation and visual material from the border region.
Pushbacks – the forcible return of people across a border without allowing them to apply for asylum – are prohibited under international and EU law.
Yet human rights organisations have long accused EU member states, including Greece, Croatia and others along the bloc’s external frontier, of engaging in this practice as part of a broader policy of deterrence against refugees and migrants.
For years, Athens has rejected allegations of illegal pushbacks, framing its actions as "robust" border protection against what it describes as attempted instrumentalisation of migration by Turkey.
Greek officials have previously dismissed similar media and NGO reports as false or part of a broader Turkish propaganda effort .
Following the latest revelations, rights advocates are calling for an independent investigation with full access to police records, border posts and detention facilities in the Evros region.
The case also raises questions for the European Union, which has poured funding and political backing into Greece’s role as a frontline state in containing migratory routes from the Middle East and Asia.
The EU’s border agency Frontex has itself been embroiled in scandal over complicity in pushbacks in the Aegean Sea, prompting the resignation of its former director in 2022. Advocacy groups argue that Brussels’ emphasis on “border security” over protection is enabling systemic abuses on land and at sea.
For migrants trapped in this shadow system, the consequences are devastating. Many have fled conflict, persecution or economic collapse in countries across the Middle East, North Africa and beyond, only to face violence and summary expulsion at Europe’s gates.
Survivors interviewed in the BBC report describe feeling they had been "hunted" by both smugglers and authorities, with no safe avenue to claim asylum or seek protection.
The report also comes amid a broader European shift towards hardline border measures , deals with third countries to contain migration, and efforts to externalise asylum processing – trends that critics say risk further eroding refugee rights.