According to an official, human traffickers wanted to sink a patrol boat during the Symi incident

The 44-year-old port authority official who shot at a speedboat smuggling migrants near the southeastern Aegean island of Symi last Friday, killing a 39-year-old Kuwaiti national, said it was in response to the boat's repeated attempts to ram the Greek patrol boat.

The incident occurred while the Port Authority patrol boat was pursuing the speedboat. The smugglers were transporting migrants from Turkey to Symi. The Turkish drivers of the speedboat did not follow the patrol boat and instead performed dangerous maneuvers and attempted to ram the patrol boat.

“It was deemed necessary to apply the rules of engagement and two warning shots were fired in a safe area (…) The boat operator continued to approach us without permission, with the sole aim of sinking us (…) To stop him, two targeted shots were fired at the engine, which is what happened,” the 44-year-old testified, adding that the migrants were lying on the ground and it was not easy to distinguish them from a distance.

Two Turkish citizens aged 24 and 16 were arrested as people smugglers. They are accused, among other things, of bringing illegal migrants into the country and exposing them to danger. They are due to appear in court on Wednesday. In their pre-trial statements, one of them pleaded ignorance and claimed that he was involved in the transport of tourists and not in illegal migration.

“I thought they were tourists who wanted to go to the Turkish beaches,” he said.

The second said that he had six drug trafficking cases pending against him in Turkey and that he had paid 4,500 euros to get to Greece. However, he named two other people as the speedboat driver, including the 39-year-old Kuwaiti national who was fatally injured.

“At the beginning there was someone driving whose name I don't know, but he is the one who was later shot,” he claimed.

A Palestinian migrant who was on the speedboat said in his testimony that the two drivers “took turns steering the boat and kept telling us to duck… as we approached the Greek coast, I heard a gunshot and then I realized we were being followed by a boat from a Greek port. I paid 4,500 euros for my transport to Greece,” he said.