German weekly retracts story on death of stranded Syrian child at Evros border
German weekly Der Spiegel on Friday published a lengthy retraction, admitting that it “made mistakes” in reporting the alleged death of a 5-year-old Syrian girl while she and other refugees found themselves stranded on a small islet in the middle of the Evros River, on the Greek-Turkish border.
Der Spiegel covered the story over three reports and a podcast last summer, in which it had indicated that the child’s death could have been prevented if the Greek state had acted more promptly to rescue the refugees, who were stranded on Greece’s side of the border.
The claims made in the reports were refuted by Greece, with Migration Minister writing to the German magazine’s editor-in-chief, asking for a retraction. According to Spiegel, following a complaint by a reader, an investigation was also launched by the German Ombudsman, which found the reports to be erroneous.
“The Ombudsman evaluated numerous internal documents, videos and photos with metadata, chat logs, e-mails, audio files, satellite recordings and other documents, spoke to many people involved and came to the conclusion that we actually made mistakes,” Spiegel wrote on its website on Friday, adding that a team of its journalists went on to look at the research anew.
“We did not correctly describe the situation in our article,” Spiegel said, following a detailed description of the steps it had taken.
“In view of the source situation, Der Spiegel should have formulated the reports on the whereabouts of the refugees and, above all, the death of the girl much more carefully,” it added, saying that “We will no longer put the earlier articles on the Maria case on the online site – not even in a revised version. Too much of it needs to be corrected.”
