Status: 20.10.2021 1 p.m.
Omar B. and his family were deported to Turkey by the EU border guards in 2016, although he had applied for asylum in Greece. Now he is suing the EU border protection agency Frontex at the ECJ for damages. His lawsuit should not remain an isolated case.
The Dutch human rights lawyer Lisa-Marie Komp represents the Syrian Omar B. in a lawsuit against Frontex – the very first lawsuit for damages against the EU Border Protection Agency at the European Court of Justice (ECJ), as she emphasizes. However, Komp does not only want him and his family to receive compensation: The ECJ must for the first time deal with the question, “To what extent Frontex is responsible for human rights violations in the ‘joint operations’ that Frontex carries out together with member states.”
In 2016, Frontex officials reportedly helped their Greek colleagues to illegally deport Omar B., his wife and four children to Turkey in such a “joint operation”. A so-called pushback, as hundreds of refugees have experienced at the EU’s external border in recent years.
What makes B’s case special is the fact that everything was documented very precisely, explains lawyer Komp – among other things, that the family applied for asylum shortly before they were illegally returned to Turkey.
Deportation before asylum decision
So far, Frontex has always denied having been involved in “pushbacks”. Also in the case of Omar B. In autumn 2016, the family fled the civil war in Syria to Turkey and from there continued by boat to the Greek islands. After she applied for asylum, a Greek policeman told Omar B. that the family should be taken to Athens.
Therefore, the B. family boarded a plane on the island of Kos on October 20, 2016. Frontex officials were also on board. Omar B. did not become suspicious – according to EU law, the applicant may not be deported until an asylum application has been decided.
“We thought we were going to Athens. But when the plane landed, we saw the Turkish flag at the airport,” B. remembers on the phone. “That’s when we realized that we had been lied to and kidnapped.”
The family was brought to the Turkish city of Adana – illegally, says their lawyer. Therefore Komp tried together with Omar B. to lodge a complaint with Frontex. Without success. Frontex gave the Greeks the responsibility for the operation. But they saw no violation of the law.
B’s complaint is not meant to be the only one
Omar B. now lives with his family in Northern Iraq. Now the European Court of Justice is his last hope for late justice: “I really hope that the European Court will agree with me and convict the men who lied to us and kidnapped us in the middle of Greece and brought us to Turkey,” he says.
His lawyer Komp estimates that it will take at least a year and a half before a verdict will be reached. But she is convinced that her client will be right: the evidence of Frontex’s complicity is too overwhelming. “During the flight not a single measure was taken to double-check whether the people who were being repatriated were actually allowed to be legally repatriated,” she says. “Almost more shocking is the way people were treated because even though these children were so young, the family was separated from each other. The people were forbidden to speak to each other and they were all put on that plane one by one.”
Omar B’s lawsuit before the ECJ is not intended to remain an isolated case. In addition, Komp hopes that a judgment in favor of its client will also lead to Frontex becoming aware of its core task again: to guarantee compliance with European law at the EU’s external border.