Greece ― the country that lets people escape justice

Greece has experienced a series of scandals that, while all very different, add up to a feeling that justice is crumbling ― and that those in power don’t want to rectify it. Or worse, are culpable.

“There is a sense of a systematic and concerted effort to downplay certain incidents,” said Andreas Pottakis, Greece’s ombudsman, an independent official who looks into state maladministration. This breeds “suspicions of an attempted cover-up” and negligence that “could involve political leadership.”

Three huge cases have tested the country’s belief in its judicial structures over the past couple of years. Two of them are related to disasters: A train crash in February 2023 that killed 57, and a shipwreck off Greece’s Peloponnesian coast last summer that left hundreds of Asian and African migrants presumed drowned.

The other is a sprawling spyware scandal that has embroiled the government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Last week, a supreme court prosecutor cleared the country’s politicians, police and intelligence services of wrongdoing.

In isolation, these may look like the type of unfortunate incidents that any government might have to deal with.

But their handling has raised disturbing questions. Opposition parties, victims groups and independent investigators talk of cover-ups and allege crucial witnesses were blocked, legal documents were ignored and victims sidelined. Parliamentary probes have done little but muddy the waters.

“By giving a deceptive impression of a well-functioning democracy, with parliamentary inquiry committees unable to effectively conduct their work, what is actually happening sometimes amounts to direct political meddling and the neutralizing of independent watchdogs’ members,” said Vas Panagiotopoulos, who covers Greece for Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a non-profit organization that defends press freedoms.

Beyond the biggest examples, Greeks perceive that public standards have eroded, whereby verbal attacks on journalists from high-ranking politicians have become commonplace, independent authorities are undermined, several migrant pushbacks have been alleged, police brutality is increasing, and civil society and media pluralism is under threat.

In an interview with POLITICO, Mitsotakis defended his country’s record. “I’ve always believed that we need to have faith in the Greek justice system,” the PM said.

Here are the three most significant recent incidents and why they are important.

The rail crash

On the night of Feb. 22, 2023, a head-on train collision killed 57 people, many of them students.

As the dust settled on the deadliest rail disaster in Greek history, deeper concerns arose concerning the functioning of the state.

“The blame runs all the way through the leadership and down to the people who were on the spot,” said Evan Vlachos, who lost his 34-year-old brother, Vaios. “You’re looking for someone who did their job right, for something that worked ― and there is a complete collapse.”

Critics talk of a cover-up, particularly of top-level mismanagement, and corruption in the railways.

That cover-up sometimes takes a literal form: Stones were heaped on the crash site, preventing experts from investigating the scene, as the wrecked carriages were removed.

It happened as the families of the victims were still hoping to find their remains.

It’s still not clear who gave that order, even though relatives of the victims say they know the identity of the minister and will testify in court.

Nikos Plakias, who lost two daughters in the crash, found some of their body parts eight months later in a separate area where debris and rubble had been moved.

“They were in a hurry to change the picture simply to change public opinion, to make the matter look closed as soon as possible,” said Vlachos, attributing it to the approach of a national election, adding that a proper search would have seen experts there for months.

Several of the details known today were unearthed only after immense effort by the families with support of independent experts.

One train container that was missing from the spot, for example, was found 16 months later in a private plot. No one has admitted to knowing how it ended up there.

A parliamentary inquiry was set up, but instead of focusing on the crash it has been distracted by the history of the Greek railway system.

The government, meanwhile, dismissed the European prosecutor’s case file calling for action against two former transport ministers. Christos Spirtzis, from the left-wing Syriza party, was suspected of breach of duty, while Konstantinos Karamanlis of Mitsotakis’ center-right New Democracy party was suspected of misappropriating funds.

Based on Greek law, only the country’s parliament can investigate alleged misconduct by former ministers; the EU prosecutor’s office says the rule contravenes EU law, and has raised the issue with the European Commission. In response, Mitsotakis has accused European prosecutor Laura Kövesi of interfering in an ongoing case and exceeding her powers.

In his POLITICO interview, Mitsotakis said the justice system had moved briskly on the case and that his government had made significant efforts to ensure decisions were made.

“Apart from that, there are also constitutional constraints,” he said. “So we’re at the limit of what our constitution allows us to do.”

Greek media have revealed that conversations between the train driver and the station master from the night of the accident were stitched together and offered to pro-government media to create the impression the accident was due entirely to human error.

Families have appealed to European bodies to shed light on the case.

“The crime in Tempe demonstrates in the worst way the corruption in the railways as part of a more general corrupt system,” Maria Karystianou, head of the association of the families, told the European Parliament.

The spyware scandal

Greece’s spying scandal — dubbed “Predatorgate” — exploded in the summer of 2022 when Nikos Androulakis, leader of the opposition PASOK social-democratic party, discovered illegal spyware on his phone in an attempted wiretap. Then it was revealed he also had been monitored by the state spy agency.

The saga has since morphed into a sprawling espionage thriller in which Predator, a highly invasive form of spyware, was discovered on dozens of phones belonging to ministers, military chiefs, journalists and business people. It also involved the illegal export of software to dictatorial regimes.

Two years later, the judicial authorities cleared all state officials and state services of wrongdoing in what opposition parties called “a day of shame.”

A report by a deputy prosecutor confirmed that of the 116 spyware targets, 28 phone numbers were under lawful state surveillance at the time of the attempted hacks. But the Supreme Court dismissed the finding as a “coincidence,” and the files containing the surveillance material in question were destroyed.

“There is great disappointment regarding the judicial investigation, especially when we realized how much evidence the journalistic investigation uncovered that proved the connection between the spy service, the prime minister’s office and Predator was ignored,” said Eliza Triantafyllou, a leading reporter on Greek investigative website Inside Story.

“The question that arises is who will ultimately protect Greek journalists from a state that considers them a national danger and monitors them with every available method just for doing their job?” she asked.

Triantafyllou and her colleague Tasos Talloglou revealed they had been placed under physical surveillance while reporting the scandal.

Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis, who was targeted 11 times by Predator, took to social media to tell journalist Thanasis Koukakis, a spyware victim who was also under state surveillance, to stop obsessing about it.

“They say I was under surveillance too,” he said. “So what? I didn’t even break a sweat. This obsession is becoming monotonously tiresome.”

His comments were condemned by legal experts as “institutional idiocy” and “conduct subject to criminal behavior.”

Mitsotakis said he had taken action.

“We changed the law with a big, different system,” he told POLITICO. “I would go as far as saying, possibly even at the expense of our national security capabilities. But it is the way things have to happen. When you have a problem, you have to be much stricter in terms of procedures.”

The sinking of the migrant boat

In June 2023, a trawler from Libya capsized off the coast of Greece carrying some 750 migrants; 104 were rescued and 82 bodies were collected. The rest were presumed lost.

A year on, international organizations note that the role of the Greek authorities has yet to be properly investigated.

Survivors have testified that the Greek coastguard tied up to the trawler while it was still upright and tried to pull it, causing it to sway. The authorities strongly deny this.

Survivor Ahmad Alkimani, 25, from Syria, said the trawler was “thrown a rope.”

“I felt a jolt,” he said. “It stopped quickly because the rope broke. They quickly tied it back on and with great force started pulling us and the ship tilted to the left.

“People started shouting, but they kept pulling, this time to the right, until it capsized.”

Coastguard officials, including Vice Admiral Georgios Alexandrakis, have been summoned to testify as suspects, POLITICO reported in June.

“Given the Greek coastguard’s refusal to conduct an internal investigation, the decision for the ombudsman to investigate the issue was no longer an option, it was a duty,” ombudsman Pottakis said.

Frontex, the EU’s coastguard agency, has said it received no reply from Greece after it offered to send a plane to monitor the overcrowded trawler. Frontex fundamental rights officer Jonas Grimheden recommended temporarily suspending the agency’s activities in Greece.

Families of the victims and survivors are taking legal action against anyone in Greece deemed responsible for the shipwreck.

“They are caught up in a long legal process but want to move forward,” said Maria Papamina, lawyer of the Greek Council for Refugees, οne of the three organizations that provide legal assistance to the survivors. “They are suffering by the psychological consequences of the accident and at the same time they need to find a way to support financially the families they have left behind.”

Barbara Moens contributed reporting from Brussels.