{"id":786166,"date":"2022-08-31T04:00:18","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T04:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/aug\/31\/i-was-close-to-death-syrian-man-tells-how-greek-officials-pushed-refugees-back-out-to-sea"},"modified":"2022-08-31T04:00:18","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T04:00:18","slug":"i-was-close-to-death-syrian-man-tells-how-greek-officials-pushed-refugees-back-out-to-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/08\/31\/i-was-close-to-death-syrian-man-tells-how-greek-officials-pushed-refugees-back-out-to-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I was close to death\u2019: Syrian man tells how Greek officials pushed refugees back out to sea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alaa Hamoudi sues EU border agency Frontex after he and 21 others allegedly abandoned in motorless inflatable<\/p>\n<p>Alaa Hamoudi was adrift in the Aegean sea and thought he was going to die. The orange dinghy \u2013 the only hope for him and 21 other people \u2013 was starting to sink, while desperate passengers threw their bags overboard. \u201cI thought I wouldn\u2019t survive, I was close to death,\u201d the the 22-year-old Syrian said.<\/p>\n<p>Only the day before, it seemed he was starting a new life. After landing on the Greek island of Samos soon after dawn on 28 April 2020, he and his fellow passengers had trudged up the steep coastal path, searching for Greek police, in order to claim asylum. \u201cI was just so happy to leave everything behind,\u201d said Hamoudi, who fled his Damascus home aged 12, moved to Lebanon, then Turkey, and hoped to reach Germany to be reunited with his father.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/aug\/31\/i-was-close-to-death-syrian-man-tells-how-greek-officials-pushed-refugees-back-out-to-sea\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alaa Hamoudi sues EU border agency Frontex after he and 21 others allegedly abandoned in motorless inflatableAlaa Hamoudi was adrift in the Aegean sea and thought he was going to die. The orange dinghy \u2013 the only hope for him and 21 other people \u2013 was &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6516,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[471,1322,1341,6,238],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6516"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":786247,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786166\/revisions\/786247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}