On the morning of February 1, the 54-year-old border chief Didimotiho contacted a human trafficker in Turkey, who told him that a group of migrants would try to cross the Greek-Turkish border that afternoon. border in the area of ​​Psathades in Evros. The chief constable alerted four of his colleagues with whom he was forming a task force to prosecute illegal immigration, informing them that he knew the exact location from where the six illegal immigrants would attempt to enter the country, as well as the location of the trafficker. will be waiting to pick them up by car domestically. In the afternoon of the same day, under the pretext of carrying out a special operation to identify migrants, a 54-year-old man asked his colleagues from the cameral control department to withdraw Frontex and Army officers who were on patrol from the Psatades area.

When it was already dark, two policemen from the “special brigade” recorded with the help of thermal imagers the foreigners moving on foot across the territory of Greece: “As soon as they descended from the embankment, there are 6 Greeks on the plain,” the rest of the team said. They, in turn, stopped the trafficker’s car in Souffli. It was about a citizen of Bulgaria, who, although taken to the border department of Didimotiho, was released after a while.

Defendants

The above is described in official reports from the Internal Affairs Service about the actions of 5 sworn police officers who were arrested within a week on charges of trafficking in migrants. These are four senior constables and one deputy constable of the Didymotikhon Border Guard Department, who are accused of allowing – in exchange for benefits – the entry of migrants into Greek territory on at least twelve occasions between October 2022 and earlier, after consultation with slave traders in Turkey and Greece.

The 54-year-old warden is described as a leading member. It was he who established contacts with traffickers in Turkey and led the other four of his colleagues. On April 25, the following conversation with his accomplice was recorded: “Spiros, let the children go, I don’t want much, I want you to tell me where they will go and what time they will come.” A month earlier, on the afternoon of March 23, a 54-year-old man is heard saying to his accomplice: “Don’t let the army interfere and ruin our lives,” and on the same days, his communication with police officers from the video control department. He asks them to remove patrols from the area, as they have their own operation to detain immigrants: “If our people, who are about 25 years old, pass and sit on the Greek point, I will tell you what they passed, and let them deal with it then army, then we have no questions. We have something specific that belongs to us,” he tells them.

The internal affairs investigation began in October 2022, but began to bear fruit after January, thanks to the use of technical means to search for suspects. During this time, there were signs of their involvement in 12 cases of migrant trafficking. Some of them allowed immigrants and traffickers to enter Greece illegally without being arrested. However, in other cases they proceeded to arrest foreigners, leaving at large the so-called “commandos” or “goats”, that is, those who accompanied and led the immigrants during their transition from Turkey to Greece.

Evidence implicating a gang of five in 12 cases of smuggling of migrants. Some of them allegedly released “special forces”, that is, human traffickers.

However, their actions did not go unnoticed by colleagues. It is even possible that police officers from their environment reported their actions to the internal affairs bodies. And this is because they received money that was not justified by their professional activities. The conversation of two border guards of the Didimotihos department, who are not among those arrested, is indicative. Speaking of their five sworn colleagues, they say: “This gives most of them a chance that they will leave the service with 200 and 300 thousand. That is, what is possible, with mathematical precision.

Where did you find them;

However, the persecuted themselves were interested in hiding the money they allegedly received from their illegal activities. One of the detainees is heard talking to his interlocutor about buying a car: “Thank you, I have to justify myself if they tell me where you got this money from? It should be visible everywhere. The car should appear on credit, because I have no collateral anywhere. ”

From the intercepted conversations, it follows that sworn police officers received material rewards from traffickers in the form of shoes and clothing, but at the first stage of the investigation, no details about financial transactions between them were revealed. As aggravating circumstances, employees of the internal affairs bodies refer to the seizure of 26,000 euros in cash from their homes, as well as significant amounts of money in dollars, Turkish liras and the currencies of Asian countries.

In EMP

In the period 2018-2019, three of the five arrested were on a business trip to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They were assigned to the service echelon in the area of ​​Didimotihos. After the abolition – for reasons of economy – of the corresponding echelon by the previous EYP administration, they served in Alexandroupoli, and at the end of 2019, they finally returned to the Didymotikhon Border Directorate.

In their pre-trial testimony to police officers, most of them “pointed” to a 54-year-old man as the leader of the group, saying that he received information about the movements of illegal immigrants, while they claimed that they were not arresting human traffickers – “commandos”, since they the target was the leaders of retail chains, and not their small and medium-sized leaders.