In this episode we speak with Iftach Cohen, co-founder of Front-LEX, a nonprofit legal organisation challenging EU border violence in court.
Iftach is going to tell us about the Alaa Hamoudi case, a Syrian man who was pushed back from Greece to Turkey by the Greek Coastguards in 2020, right under the eyes of the European Border and Coastguard agency, Frontex.
He tell us how Front-LEX won this case for Hamoudi at the EU's top court in January, and explains why this landmark legal victory should "benefit all future victims of Frontex's activities, and bring to an end its de facto immunity" in court.
Iftach will also tell us about a Frontex's report on the Greek government using Afghan paramilitaries to push people back to Turkey
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---Show notes---
For more on Front-Lex, see: front-lex.eu
And follow them on BlueSky: front_lex
Read Front-Lex's article on the Alaa Hamoudi case: https://front-lex.eu/the-court-of-justice-of-the-european-union-delivers-a-first-legal-victory-in-a-pushback-case-against-frontex-a-landmark-judgment-in-hamoudi-v-frontex/
For more on former Frontex chief Fabrice Leggeri, and why he's being investigated for crimes against humanity, read this report in Le Monde: http://lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/03/25/why-former-frontex-chief-fabrice-leggeri-is-under-investigation-for-complicity-in-crimes-against-humanity_6751795_7.html
For more on Frontex, see episodes 76, 68, 54, 52, 50, 34, 31, 23, 15, 7 and 1 of The Civil Fleet Podcast.
For more on the Pylos shipwreck, see episodes 60 and 52 (the latter of which has Lighthouse Reports journalist Bashar Deeb)
Watch Bashar Deeb's report on Hamoudi's case, here: youtube.com/watch?v=Td5e9Y7U6ZI
Check out episodes 3, 4, 9, 16, 25, 26, 28, 35, 53, and 56 for more on Greece
For more on Refugees in Libya, see episodes: 79 and 29.
You can read Frontex's redacted report on the pushback case in Greece involving Afghan paramilitaries on The Civil Fleet's website, in the post about this article.
The quote attributed to the late Tony Benn is: "The way the government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it."
Apparently, it was Scottish journalist Neal Ascherson who said it in 1996: "The way a state treats its aliens is the way it would treat its own subjects if it dared."
You can read that here: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/if-we-teach-children-morality-what-will-we-say-about-the-arms-trade-1325052.html
