More than 100 MEPs have written to the European Commission president calling for a formal investigation into the death of a Pakistani man on Turkey’s border with Greece in March, according to Sky News.
The letter, to Ursula von der Leyen, was prompted by a probe into the death of Muhammad Gulzar by open-source investigators at Bellingcat, Lighthouse Reports and Forensic Architecture, which was contributed to by Sky News and German magazine Der Spiegel.
The letter says: “We … expect that the European Commission takes its responsibility to undertake a thorough investigation to the findings revealed by the reconstruction, which give rise to grave concerns, and to report its findings to the European Parliament.
“If both the Greek government and the European Commission remain unresponsive to these allegations, we would witness an impunity which cannot be tolerated in a union that is based on respect for the rule of law.”
Muhammad Gulzar was shot dead in an incident on March 4 as thousands of migrants gathered at the European Union’s southern frontier at Edirne on the Turkey-Greece border.
The migrants had been encouraged to go to the border over a period of several days after Turkey stood down guards on its side of the frontier.
The Turkish government was attempting to pressure European Union nations to take in more migrants and to take a more active role in the Syrian conflict.
As thousands of migrants gathered at the border and pressure mounted, the Greek authorities reinforced their side with soldiers to maintain the frontier’s integrity.
Gulzar was among seven men hit with live rounds near the border fence on the morning of March 4.
Turkish authorities accused the Greek side of firing the bullets. Greece swiftly issued a denial, dismissing the incident as “fake news.”
