Deaths at the border: NGOs accuse Bulgarian police of ‘worst humanity’

Sofia: Human rights advocates have accused Bulgarian Border Police of “deliberate neglect” following the deaths of three Egyptian minors who succumbed to hypothermia near the Turkish border. InfoMigrants spoke with rescuers about their encounters with Bulgarian authorities.

Bulgarian Border Police “consciously and deliberately blocked the rescue teams’ access” to three young Egyptian boys, who succumbed to their deaths from hypothermia in the forests in southeastern Bulgaria, near the border with Turkey, according to a new report by the NGOs No Name Kitchen (NNK) and Collettivo Rotte Balcaniche (CRB).

“Despite the urgency of the situation, Bulgarian law enforcement agencies not only failed to act but also actively obstructed efforts to provide life-saving assistance,” the report added, citing pictures, videos, audio recordings, and geolocation data.

James Holden, a volunteer at NNK and part of the rescue team involved in the rescue attempt in December, told InfoMigrants on Saturday (January 25) that he “witnessed the worst of humanity” in Bulgaria.

“I saw first hand the evil and arguably predominant side of the Bulgarian emergency services in action. It is without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that if the victims of these circumstances on December 27, 2024 had been white, Bulgarian teenagers, then the entire response to these distress calls from people at risk of death would have been wholly different,” he said.

In the early hours of December 27, the human rights activists in Bulgaria were alerted to three Egyptian minors lying unconscious in the snow near Burgas, on the eastern coast of the country. The boys, identified as Ali, Samir, and Yasser, aged 15, 16, and 17, were reported to be in a critical condition.

The NGO’s report, entitled, “Frozen lives,” and published last week, outlines the events and rescue attempts made between December 27 and 29, 2024. Rescuers said the youth were stranded in a remote, wooded area, exposed to freezing conditions and unable to move to safety. It was these rescue teams, later arrested without charges, who said they ultimately found the lifeless bodies of the three boys.

The NGOs claim that the lives of the three Egyptian minors could have been saved either by Bulgaria’s emergency services, “had they acted promptly,” or by the rescue teams from NNK and CRB.

The rescue teams said they made several attempts to save the three boys from freezing to death, but were hindered by the Bulgarian authorities. For example, they said they first attempted to reach the first pin location, where the 17 year-old was reported to be.

However, “The Border Police stopped the first rescue team (RT1) for half an hour, and forced them to turn back,” the report noted.

“One Border Police pick-up escorted the team away from the person in distress, while a second Border Police car turned back towards his location. At 3:04, the same team was stopped again by Border Police. Despite showing officers the video of the boy moaning in the snow, they were forced to drive in the opposite direction.”

The report added that “no ambulance was ever sent to the location of the boy” and that “by this point, activists had contacted the 112 line three separate times.”

On December 28, during a reported third rescue attempt, the rescue team said they found the body of the 17-year-old Egyptian boy. The team could “see both dog paw prints and boot prints around his body, which indicates that the Border Police had already found him, maybe still alive or dead, but had chosen to leave him there in the cold.”

The team said after they called the 112 emergency line, Border Police attended the scene where they detained the team “outside in the cold for six hours” and “demanded that the team move the body of the boy themselves.”

Holden, one of the activists involved in the attempted rescues of the three minors, told InfoMigrants that the Bulgarian Border Police had stopped him and other rescuers several times.

“We were stopped for the third time by the Border Police, who on this occasion were incredibly aggressive and brutal towards us. They ordered us to sit in the road, and then started stripping personal items and pieces of clothing from us, before throwing them into the trees behind where we sat,” Holden explained. The Border Police also took away his passport during one intervention.

“One horrifying thought occurred to me during this situation; ‘are they going to shoot us?’ at least some of them were armed and at the time it was very unclear what was going to happen. Whilst the Border Police were treating us in this way, the two boys whom we were in the area to rescue were still alone nearby and succumbing to hypothermia.”

According to Holden, the Border Police also “strip-searched the only female member of our team and also illegally took our fingerprints and photographs.”

He was later kept in a cell for approximately three hours.

“The three of us were then taken out of the cell to a different and smaller office room which had a FRONTEX banner across the wall. Only at this point were we told by the translator that we were in fact not under arrest.”

In response to the allegations made within the “Frozen Lives” report, Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry, which oversees the country’s Border Police, told InfoMigrants that it considers “the issued allegations as ungrounded.”

“Our patrols reacted to all of those signals in a timely manner,” the ministry said, adding that “Our officers are strictly following the legal requirement for use of power and additional equipment while fulfilling their duties.”

“The reaction to the quoted signals from December 27, 2024 was also timely and according to the existing requirements in an urgent situation. However, the established circumstances at the spot were completely different from the information provided in the signals. The Border Police Unit Sredets immediately sent patrols in response tot he provided coordinates or exact locations in the different forest areas. When the patrols arrived at the spot they didn’t find any distressed persons or dead bodies, nor traces from any passers-by. The bodies of the dead migrants we found on December 28 and 29 were found in different locations from the ones we received in the signals on December 27.”

The ministry said that the investigation related to the cases is ongoing.

Esme Smithson Swain, who worked on the “Frozen Lives” report, says she is concerned that “there are thousands more people who may never receive the bodies of their loved ones who die on Europe’s borders.”

“When we trace the developments in European migration policy over the last year, cases like this cannot be a suprise,” she told InfoMigrants.

“European migration policy has become a race to the bottom, and the decisions of European policy-makers have not only permitted the death of these children but have institutionalized it; creating a vicious cycle of violence, impunity, and repression,” she concluded.