As they traversed the tough, 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 loss of life 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 searching for lacking individuals domestically. 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 Instances was in a position to piece collectively beforehand unknown particulars in regards to the group’s journey in its determined closing hours. The reporting exhibits that not less than 12 had already been captured as soon as earlier than by Greek border guards and turned again to Turkey.
Their resolution to danger 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 an alternative, 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 a lot of the shut kin of the remainder dwell in Syria and can’t journey to supply related assessments. However interviews with Greek officers, support employees, greater than 20 kin of the victims, and the smuggler who put them on the route, offered intensive proof in regards to the identities of the others.
The Instances additionally examined voice messages, movies, location information and pictures despatched to relations. At the least 5 of the victims had been kids or youngsters, interviews and the movies urged.
In mid-September, a Instances 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 kin revealed the group’s mounting terror as they tried to outrun the fireplace.
Because the blaze climbed the hills and rushed up behind them, the lads and boys ran via the timber and down a rocky path.
Three of them sheltered inside a tiny, disused shepherd’s shack, maybe pondering its 4 concrete partitions would shield them.
2 hundred toes away on a hillside, 9 individuals huddled, amongst them not less than two kids. 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 practically 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 at the moment, 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 Hearth: A Dilemma
When Basel al-Ahmad and his older brother Qusai had been rising up exterior Aleppo, Syria, Basel had been the playful and mischievous one, in response to one among 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 prime 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 method to construct a life was to hitch his brother and cousins in Norway, the place they’d all been granted refugee standing over the previous decade.
For many years, individuals fleeing conflicts and excessive poverty have traversed the tough terrain of Evros, together with the harmful Evros River, in search of a brand new life in Europe. It is likely 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 imagined to get picked up.
4. Aug. 21 The positioning the place the 18 asylum seekers had been discovered burned to loss of life.
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 response to WhatsApp messages despatched to Basel’s brother and reviewed by The Instances.
It was not an unusual prevalence. Greece now has a document as one among Europe’s most hostile countries towards migrants. In recent times, the authorities have cracked down on asylum seekers on the borders, usually using violence and extrajudicial deportations, in response to information studies, rights teams and inner findings by the E.U. border company.
Greece’s status 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. Evidence suggests 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 present everybody a good probability to use for asylum, with deportations solely after due course of. Greek authorities say they apply a “robust however truthful” coverage, and deny they’re doing something improper.
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 attempting 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 preserve operating on wooded paths and hope the fireplace 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 exterior the village of Avas, however the fireplace was raging close by.
At Four p.m. the subsequent day, Basel despatched Qusai a video of a helicopter dropping water on the fireplace, very close to the group.
One other video, despatched at 8:12 p.m., confirmed a part of the group, together with not less than 5 minors, strolling swiftly 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 fireplace burned via the realm between Eight 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 individuals crossing from Turkey to northern Greece.
Qusai, now 31 and dealing as an engineer in Norway, needed to imagine his brother was alive, maybe hiding, or in detention in Greece or Turkey. His mom again residence known as him incessantly asking for information.
A couple of days later, Qusai acquired the numbers for different kin 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 stories that they hoped urged their family members had been nonetheless alive.
For instance, kin noticed on-line that in the course of 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 attempting to flee the flames, locked them up in a windowless trailer, and livestreamed the entire episode on Fb. The migrants had been rapidly launched and are making use of for asylum.
Some kin 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 info.
Smugglers preserve 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 companies, and suppress dangerous information.
The group of 18, the smuggler instructed 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 kin verify this.
The smuggler instructed the households that he had info they’d all been detained in a camp in Greece. The asylum seekers and their households had paid 5,000 euros per individual — greater than $5,200 — that the smuggler might acquire solely when the group reached Serbia.
In a telephone interview, Mr. al-Hamwi sought to defend his document as a smuggler, and stated that the Greek authorities had arrested three drivers who he had despatched to rescue the group. He stated he had suggested the asylum seekers to show themselves in to the authorities as an alternative 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 building employee, one of many 3.5 million Syrians taken in by Turkey for the reason that conflict 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. They’d 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 in opposition to Syrians. The households determined the cousins can be safer in Europe.
The 2 boys will be seen in movies of Basel’s group. Nonetheless, Ahmad doesn’t imagine they’re lifeless. “Maybe they’re in an orphanage as a result of they’re kids, 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 20 years, it has been his job to post-mortem lifeless asylum seekers and attempt to discover their kin.
“For me, it’s a matter of responsibility,” he stated in an interview. “I must attempt my greatest to present 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 ground 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 Purple Cross refrigeration models 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 toes 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 acquired the decision: His pattern confirmed definitively that he was the brother of one of many victims. Basel was lifeless. The remainder of his group had been probably lifeless, as properly.
The information ripped via the WhatsApp group. Some disputed the DNA know-how: We have to see the our bodies, they stated, despite the fact that 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 fulfill Dr. Pavlidis and establish the physique. And he needed 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 exterior Aleppo. On Sept. 13, their mom and different kin laid him to relaxation.
Qusai additionally needed 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 timber. His cousins ran after him, held him, mourned with him, their laments slicing 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 duplicate 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 telephone quietly.
“I collected your brother’s physique,” Lt. Lykidis stated, avoiding eye contact as he pretended to sort up a kind. “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 huge arms and held Qusai.
“I’m sorry, too,” he stated. “I’m very sorry.”
Karam Shoumali contributed reporting from Berlin.
