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As they traversed the cruel, wooded terrain in northeastern Greece, the 18 asylum seekers had been offered with an agonizing dilemma: Take the safer route via villages and over highways, however into the arms of the Greek authorities, or journey via the forests and fields being ravaged by Europe’s largest recorded wildfire.
They opted for the forests.
On Aug. 21, round 9 p.m., the group of asylum seekers burned to demise in Europe’s largest recorded wildfire. Their our bodies, charred past recognition, had been found the subsequent day.
Greek authorities assumed the victims had been migrants as a result of nobody was in search of lacking folks regionally. And for greater than a month, their identities, and the circumstances of their deaths, remained a thriller.
However over weeks of reporting, The New York Occasions was capable of piece collectively beforehand unknown particulars in regards to the group’s journey in its determined closing hours. The reporting reveals that a minimum of 12 had already been captured as soon as earlier than by Greek border guards and turned again to Turkey.
Their resolution to threat the wildfire was meant to keep away from recapture at any price. They had been fleeing war-ravaged Syria, in search of what they hoped can be a greater life in Europe.
As a substitute, they died on a rocky hillside, their ashes now combined with the gray-scale panorama of Evros, the place the local weather disaster fueling ferocious wildfires collided with the migrant disaster that has lengthy introduced tragedy to this area.
Just one physique has been recognized conclusively via DNA testing, as a result of many of the shut kinfolk of the remaining dwell in Syria and can’t journey to supply comparable exams. However interviews with Greek officers, support staff, greater than 20 kinfolk of the victims, and the smuggler who put them on the route, offered intensive proof in regards to the identities of the others.
The Occasions additionally examined voice messages, movies, location knowledge and pictures despatched to relations. No less than 5 of the victims had been youngsters or youngsters, interviews and the movies prompt.
In mid-September, a Occasions correspondent accompanied the brother and 4 cousins of the primary sufferer to be recognized to the positioning the place he perished.
The movies and voice messages offered by kinfolk revealed the group’s mounting terror as they tried to outrun the hearth.
Because the blaze climbed the hills and rushed up behind them, the lads and boys ran via the bushes and down a rocky path.
Three of them sheltered inside a tiny, disused shepherd’s shack, maybe pondering its 4 concrete partitions would defend them.
2 hundred ft away on a hillside, 9 folks huddled, amongst them a minimum of two youngsters. They died there collectively. One other synthetic it the farthest, down a hill, however he too was not quick sufficient.
The announcement of their deaths by Greek authorities set off panic almost a thousand miles away in Syria, the place relations started an anguished wait. They shared updates in a gaggle chat and reconstructed their family members’ actions via movies and texts, expressing encouragement.
Even as we speak, the daddy of one of many boys presumed to have died within the fireplace nonetheless holds out hope. “My coronary heart tells me he’s alive,” he stated.
The Police or the Fireplace: A Dilemma
When Basel al-Ahmad and his older brother Qusai had been rising up outdoors Aleppo, Syria, Basel had been the playful and mischievous one, in line with one in every of their youthful cousins, main the gaggle of boys in epic stone-slinging competitions. However at 15, impressed by Qusai’s studiousness, Basel underwent a metamorphosis.
He completed his grasp’s diploma in engineering on the high of his class on the College of Aleppo, his brother stated, and had spent the previous few months aiding restoration efforts after the catastrophic earthquake in Turkey and northwestern Syria. However he felt the one solution to construct a life was to affix his brother and cousins in Norway, the place they’d all been granted refugee standing over the previous decade.
For many years, folks fleeing conflicts and excessive poverty have traversed the cruel terrain of Evros, together with the harmful Evros River, in search of a brand new life in Europe. It is without doubt one of the continent’s oldest and busiest migrant routes, with Greece the primary cease — and for some, the final.
1. Aug. 14 Group is detained by Greek authorities and despatched again to Turkey.
2. Aug. 20 They spend the night time close to Avas ready to be picked up the subsequent day by the smuggler’s accomplices.
3. Aug. 21 The placement the place the group was speculated to get picked up.
4. Aug. 21 The location the place the 18 asylum seekers had been discovered burned to demise.
Basel, 28, went from Syria to Turkey, and on Aug. 11, with the assistance of a smuggler, he crossed the border into Greece with 11 others. However three days later, the group was detained by border guards and despatched again to Turkey, in line with WhatsApp messages despatched to Basel’s brother and reviewed by The Occasions.
It was not an unusual prevalence. Greece now has a document as one in every of Europe’s most hostile nations towards migrants. Lately, the authorities have cracked down on asylum seekers on the borders, usually utilizing violence and extrajudicial deportations, in line with information experiences, rights teams and inside findings by the E.U. border company.
Greece’s repute for toughness deepened in June, when as many as 650 migrants drowned off its coast in one of many Mediterranean’s worst shipwrecks in a decade. Proof means that the Greek coast guard might have helped save them, however didn’t. The authorities have stated that they’re investigating the circumstances.
Home, worldwide and European Union legal guidelines require Greece to provide everybody a good probability to use for asylum, with deportations solely after due course of. Greek authorities say they apply a “powerful however truthful” coverage, and deny they’re doing something unsuitable.
On a second try with the identical group, Basel crossed the border into Greece on Aug. 17, two days earlier than the wildfire broke out within the forest he was making an attempt to traverse.
Messages to his brother present that Basel and his group, to remain out of the sight of the police and the military, needed to maintain working on wooded paths and hope the hearth stayed behind them.
On Aug. 20, Basel despatched a voice message to Qusai: A driver was supposed to choose up the group from a spot outdoors the village of Avas, however the fireplace was raging close by.
At 4 p.m. the subsequent day, Basel despatched Qusai a video of a helicopter dropping water on the hearth, very close to the group.
One other video, despatched at 8:12 p.m., confirmed a part of the group, together with a minimum of 5 minors, strolling rapidly away from plumes of smoke.
The group’s final identified location was close to Avas. Basel was final on-line on WhatsApp on Aug. 21 at 8:18 p.m. In interviews, a number of native residents stated the hearth burned via the realm between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Scrambling for Solutions
The subsequent day, Greek authorities introduced the 18 deaths, setting off panic among the many households. Qusai started a methodical seek for his youthful brother.
He began on Fb, on a web page that focuses on folks crossing from Turkey to northern Greece.
Qusai, now 31 and dealing as an engineer in Norway, wished to imagine his brother was alive, maybe hiding, or in detention in Greece or Turkey. His mom again house known as him incessantly asking for information.
A number of days later, Qusai bought the numbers for different kinfolk who had relations touring with Basel from the smuggler who had organized the journey. He arrange a WhatsApp group the place they exchanged items of reports that they hoped prompt their family members had been nonetheless alive.
For instance, kinfolk noticed on-line that throughout the wildfires, residents turned vigilantes had been detaining asylum seekers, claiming they had been arsonists.
In a single case, three vigilantes detained 13 Syrians and Pakistanis who had simply crossed into Greece and had been making an attempt to flee the flames, locked them up in a windowless trailer, and livestreamed the entire episode on Fb. The migrants had been shortly launched and are making use of for asylum.
Some kinfolk had been so determined that they hoped their family members is perhaps amongst these detained by the vigilantes.
In addition they pressed the smuggler who had organized Basel’s journey, a Syrian based mostly in Turkey who goes by the title Abu Ali al-Hamwi, for data.
Smugglers maintain households knowledgeable of a journey’s progress as a result of they receives a commission solely when the migrants attain an agreed-upon vacation spot. Some publish upbeat updates on social media to promote their providers, and suppress dangerous information.
The group of 18, the smuggler advised the households, contained Basel’s group of 12 Syrians plus six others they’d met on the way in which in Greece. Messages and movies despatched by a few of them to kinfolk verify this.
The smuggler advised the households that he had data they’d all been detained in a camp in Greece. The asylum seekers and their households had paid 5,000 euros per particular person — greater than $5,200 — that the smuggler might acquire solely when the group reached Serbia.
In a cellphone interview, Mr. al-Hamwi sought to defend his document as a smuggler, and stated that the Greek authorities had arrested three drivers whom he had despatched to rescue the group. He stated he had suggested the asylum seekers to show themselves in to the authorities as a substitute of staying within the forests.
In Basel’s group, one man was working for the smuggler in Turkey as a information. One other was a distant cousin of Basel’s who had been working in Turkey as a development employee, one of many 3.5 million Syrians taken in by Turkey for the reason that warfare started in 2011, now more and more unwelcome there.
Two of the youngest members of the group, Mahmoud al-Dawoud, 15, and Ali al-Dawoud, 13, had been cousins. That they had fled Syria to Turkey with their households in 2016, Ali’s father, Ahmad, stated, and had instantly registered for resettlement, the one formal path to asylum within the European Union.
Seven years later, they had been nonetheless struggling in Turkey, the place, Ahmad stated, public sentiment had turned towards Syrians. The households determined the cousins can be safer in Europe.
The 2 boys could be seen in movies of Basel’s group. Nonetheless, Ahmad doesn’t imagine they’re useless. “Maybe they’re in an orphanage as a result of they’re youngsters, or in a jail,” he stated.
One thing Like Closure
Qusai traveled to Greece and submitted a DNA pattern to the authorities on Aug. 27. As a result of he had a Norwegian passport, he might journey freely in Europe.
On the different finish of the identification course of was Pavlos Pavlidis, the one coroner in a big part of northeastern Greece. For the previous twenty years, it has been his job to post-mortem useless asylum seekers and attempt to discover their kinfolk.
“For me, it’s a matter of obligation,” he stated in an interview. “I have to attempt my finest to provide all our bodies again to their family members to allow them to be buried, irrespective of who they’re.”
He took a deep puff from a cigarette in his workplace on the bottom flooring of the hospital in Alexandroupolis, about six miles south of the place the 18 asylum seekers had been discovered. It was Aug. 23, the day after he had collected the our bodies and carried out autopsies on them.
The morgue was throughout the hall. Outdoors, two giant Pink Cross refrigeration items held unclaimed our bodies.
The most effective probability at figuring out them can be DNA, Dr. Pavlidis stated. “A relative will inform me, my brother was six ft tall, he had blue eyes, brown hair, a tattoo,” he stated. “None of this issues when the physique is burned. The eyes are gone. The hair is gone. The pores and skin is gone. The physique shrivels.”
On Sept. 6, 10 days after submitting DNA, Qusai bought the decision: His pattern confirmed definitively that he was the brother of one of many victims. Basel was useless. The remainder of his group had been most probably useless, as properly.
The information ripped via the WhatsApp group. Some disputed the DNA know-how: We have to see the our bodies, they stated, though they had been unrecognizable. Others privately messaged Qusai: How can we give DNA?
All that was left was for Qusai to make the journey he dreaded. Flanked by 4 cousins, he flew to satisfy Dr. Pavlidis and determine the physique. And he wished to rearrange for his brother to be despatched to their mom in Aleppo, for a correct burial.
For 3,200 euros, or $3,400, a Muslim funeral parlor agreed to move the physique throughout Turkey to the Syrian border. There, Basel’s stays had been handed over to Syrian undertakers who took them to a burial website outdoors Aleppo. On Sept. 13, their mom and different kinfolk laid him to relaxation.
Qusai additionally wished to see — wanted to see — the place Basel died. Till that time, he had maintained his composure, however when he reached the hillside, accompanied by his cousins, he collapsed in anguish. He screamed and beat the ashen earth. He ran inside what was left of a shed and wouldn’t get out. He tumbled down the hill via the burned bushes. His cousins ran after him, held him, mourned with him, their laments chopping via the eerie stillness throughout the scorched hills.
About an hour later, Qusai sat within the automobile, staring forward blankly.
The very last thing he needed to do was give a replica of his passport to the native fireplace division. Within the small workplace of a lieutenant fireplace colonel, Dimitris Lykidis, a middle-aged, heavyset man with blackened arms, Qusai clasped his cellphone quietly.
“I collected your brother’s physique,” Lt. Lykidis stated, avoiding eye contact as he pretended to sort up a type. “I used to be one of many firefighters on the scene.”
Qusai stood. “Please, can I hug you?” he requested. “You had been among the many final to see my brother. Thanks. I’m sorry about what occurred.”
Lt. Lykidis stood up, eyes brimming with tears. He opened his large arms and held Qusai.
“I’m sorry, too,” he stated. “I’m very sorry.”
Karam Shoumali contributed reporting from Berlin.
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