The Greek authorities didn’t reply to repeated requests for remark. But campaigning on Lesbos final week forward of normal elections on Sunday, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis defended his authorities’s “tough but fair” migration insurance policies and boasted of a 90 % drop within the arrival of “illegal migrants.”

The authorities has constantly denied mistreating asylum seekers and factors to the truth that it shoulders a disproportionate burden of managing new arrivals to Europe.

But the video, supplied by an Austrian assist employee, Fayad Mulla, who has spent a lot of the previous two and a half years engaged on the island and making an attempt to doc abuses in opposition to migrants, would be the most damning proof but of the Greek authorities’ violation of worldwide legal guidelines and E.U. guidelines governing how asylum seekers have to be handled.

In addition to interviewing the asylum seekers in Turkey, The Times verified the footage by doing a frame-by-frame evaluation to establish the folks within the video, geolocating key occasions and confirming the time and day utilizing maritime visitors knowledge, as nicely an evaluation of the place of the solar and visual shadows.

We confirmed the video in particular person to a few senior officers from the European Commission in Brussels, describing how we had verified it. Later, in written feedback, the Commission stated that it was “concerned by the footage” and that, although it had not verified the fabric for itself, it could take the matter up with the Greek authorities.

Greece “must fully respect obligations under the E.U. asylum rules and international law, including ensuring access to the asylum procedure,” stated Anitta Hipper, the European Commission spokeswoman for migration.

The Greek authorities declined requests to satisfy in particular person to evaluation the video.

Greece and the European Union hardened their attitudes towards migrants after the arrival in 2015 and 2016 of more than one million refugees from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. The wave of newcomers reshaped European politics, igniting populist hard-right forces who performed on nativist angst.

Greece is way from alone in cracking down on migrants. Poland, Italy and Lithuania have lately modified their legal guidelines to make it simpler to repel migrants and to punish those that assist them.

But the brand new movies recommend that the Greek authorities have gone nonetheless additional, resorting to surreptitious extrajudicial expulsions that sweep up even probably the most susceptible with the participation of its maritime forces.

“Through the will of God, we managed to survive,” Ms. Aden stated.

Anatomy of an extrajudicial deportation

It was simply after noon on April 11 {that a} white unmarked van drove right down to a small cove with a wood dock on the southern tip of Lesbos, in accordance with Mr. Mulla’s video.

As the van wound right down to the shoreline, two males ready in a speedboat coated their faces with what seem like ski masks. When the van stopped, three males emerged, unlocked the again doorways — and out filed 12 folks, a number of of them young children.

The passengers included Ms. Aden and her child, Awale, with whom she had initially fled Jilib, a small metropolis in an space of Somalia managed by Al Shabab, a militant group linked with Al Qaeda, she stated. Ms. Aden stated they’d landed on Lesbos in a smugglers’ dinghy a day earlier and had spent an evening hiding within the brush earlier than being rounded up by masked males.

Sulekha Abdullahi, 40, and her six youngsters have been crammed within the van, too.

So have been Mahdi, 25, and Miliyen, 33, who stated they’d additionally arrived on Lesbos by dinghy and sought cowl within the brush. They have been captured after a brief pursuit, and Miliyen’s ankles nonetheless bore deep scratches after we interviewed him days later.

They agreed to share their tales however requested to be recognized solely by their first names, terrified of retribution.

A couple of minutes after the group was escorted out of the van, everybody was taken out on the Aegean waters within the speedboat. From a distance it regarded like a vacationer leisure experience. It was something however.