German weekly news outlet Der Spiegel issued a retraction, admitting that it “made mistakes” in reporting the alleged death of 5-year-old Syrian girl, Maria while she and other refugees found themselves stranded on a small islet in the middle of the Evros River, on the Greek-Turkish border.
Echoing Turkey’s line, the Der Spiegel reports alleged that the Greek state and authorities could have prevented the child’s death by adopting a different approach towards immigration and taking different measures to promptly rescue the 38 stranded refugees.
The claims made by Der Spiegel over three lengthy reports and a podcast last summer, had been refuted by Greece, with Migration Minister Notis Mitarakis writing a letter to the German magazine’s editor-in-chief and to Channel 4, asking for a retraction.
“Greece has been unfairly criticised and its reputation unfairly tarnished. The minister reiterated that the accusations that the 38 migrants were on Greek territory are false,” Mr Mitarakis noted in his letter.
He had also stressed that even the NGO HumanRights360, which represents the group of 38 applicants at the European Court of Human Rights, admitted that the islet where the migrants were located is within Turkish territory.
In fact, the group clarified that the Hellenic Police, the Hellenic Armed Forces and the Greek government have pointed out from the beginning that the islet was located in Turkish territory.
“If we had acted, Greece would have violated the Turkish border,” he said in the letter. Regarding the reports providing evidence that “make clear from the facts and from the available photographic material that has been collected that there is no proof of either a missing child or a dead child”.
He said that the testimony to the European Court of Human Rights referred to four children (born 2013, 2013, 2017 & 2018) and that they are all alive and well in Greece. He also said that no fifth child had been reported, and no fifth child appears in any of the photos. As for the child who was reported to have been stung by a scorpion, Mitarakis stressed that they are in good health, adding that no person required hospitalisation after the initial check up.
According to Der Spiegel, following complaints by readers, an investigation was also launched by the German Ombudsman, which found the reports to be erroneous.
“The Ombudsman evaluated numerous internal documents, videos and photos with metadata, chat logs, e-mails, audio files, satellite recordings and other documents, spoke to many people involved and came to the conclusion that we actually made mistakes,” Der Spiegel wrote on its website on Friday, adding that a team of its journalists went on to look at the research anew.
“We did not correctly describe the situation in our article,” Der Spiegel said, following a detailed description of the steps it had taken. In view of the source situation, Der Spiegel should have formulated the reports on the whereabouts of the refugees and, above all, the death of the girl much more carefully,” it added, saying that “We will no longer put the earlier articles on the Maria case on the online site – not even in a revised version. Too much of it needs to be corrected.”
Following the retraction, Greece’s Minister of Citizen Protection, Takis Theodorikakos made a public comment to the press urging Greece’s opposition party, SYRIZA to apologise for not retracting their comments against the New Democracy administration and publicly apologising for aligning with Der Spiegel’s allegations regarding the incorrect reports.
“Spiegel apologises but SYRIZA is hiding,” Mr Theodorikakos said.