GREECE – ILLEGAL PUSHBACKS – LCL – ELDH – advisory opinion to the ECtHR

Third Party Intervention in the case of:
(Salman) Muhammad v. Greece, no. 34331/22
I. Introduction

  1. The following submission is made by Legal Centre Lesvos (‘LCL’) and European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights (together ‘the Interveners’) pursuant to the notification that the President of the Section has granted leave, under Rule 44(3) of the Rules of the European Court of Human Rights.
  2. The case of Muhammad v. Greece, no. 34331/22 (‘this Application’) concerns the killing of Muhammed Gulzar, who was shot on 4 March 2020, while attempting to cross the border from Turkey to Greece.1 In the following submission, the Interveners will provide information on the systematic use of force by Greek law enforcement at Greece’s borders
    at the time of the incident subject to this Application and beyond (II); on the systematic inaccessibility and ineffectiveness of legal remedies in Greece in the context of border violence (III); and on how crucial evidence remains in the hands of the State, including through the systematic prevention of evidence collection and documentation of border violence as well as a deliberate practice of concealing the identity of perpetrators (IV). In the final section, the Interveners respectfully present their concluding remarks (V).