On 18 October 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Iftach Cohen, co-founder of Front-LEX, managed to travel to the city of Bursa in Turkey. There, he met Alaa Hamoudi for the first time.

This meeting was made possible by Bashar Deeb, a journalist working for the investigative media outlet Lighthouse Reports, who was investigating pushbacks jointly executed by Frontex and Greece in the Aegean Sea region.

The reason for Iftach’s trip to Turkey was Bashar’s reconstruction of the pushback operation of 28 and 29 April 2020, directed against 22 asylum seekers. Alaa was one of the victims with whom Bashar had managed to establish contact, and was one of two victims interviewed in the Bellingcat and Lighthouse Reports article. According to the article, after the group made landfall on the Greek island of Samos, they were rounded up and forcibly put on a rubber boat, towed for hours toward Turkish waters, and left adrift overnight before being rescued by the TCG. While the systematic practice of pushbacks in the Aegean was well known among NGOs and activists, no victim had yet succeeded in bringing such a case before a court.

Between 2020 and 2021, documents from the Greek authorities indicated that at least 43,000 people were subjected to unlawful practices at the border, including pushbacks, concealed  in Frontex’s Joint Operations Reporting Application (JORA) database  under the term “prevention of entry” operations. Since then, the practice has never ceased.

This represents the reality of tens of thousands of people who are facing unbearable violence without any opportunity to seek justice, a reality imposed by the systemic practice of pushback operations and their cover-up, continuously implemented in the Aegean by Greece and Frontex since March 2020.

Following his first meeting with Alaa, hearing his full version of events,  and  reviewing the evidence gathered, Iftach offered to represent him on behalf of Front-LEX. Aware that the legal proceedings would take years and would likely not change his own situation, Alaa still agreed to take Frontex to court, in the hope that it might lead to change for others in the future.

What made this case possible: first, the valuable work of investigative journalism, which gave Alaa a voice in the first place, provided Front-LEX with an indispensable lead for identifying and contacting a potential applicant,  and uncovered that a Frontex aircraft had flown twice over the group during the pushback; second, Alaa’s remarkable kindness, strength, courage and desire to seek justice; and finally, Iftach’s decision to take that plane, his sustained support and engagement over the years.

All of this, of course, has been carried forward to this day by the consistent, high-quality work of the entire Front-LEX team in supporting this case.

It highlights both our collective and individual responsibility to protect and support victims, as well as the importance of proactively reaching out to them in order to help them overcome personal and language barriers, amplify their voices and achieve meaningful change for them, for us as European citizens, and for society as whole.

This is why Front-LEX engages in strategic litigation, supporting cases that have the potential to bring about systemic change in policy, even when the road is long and uncertain for the victims, and even when powerful forces stand in the way of fulfilling your mission.