Greek court rejects charges against aid workers

Lesbos court docket says instances introduced in opposition to two dozen folks have procedural flaws.

A court docket on the Greek island of Lesbos has rejected expenses in opposition to a gaggle of help staff and volunteers who participated in migrant rescue operations, ruling on procedural grounds to return the case to the prosecution for refiling.

The case by which 24 folks, 17 foreigners and 7 Greeks, have been charged over their work with migrants newly arriving on Lesbos, has drawn widespread criticism from human rights organisations. The defendants argue they have been doing nothing greater than helping folks whose lives have been in danger.

“Trials like this are deeply regarding as a result of they criminalise life-saving work and set a harmful precedent,” the UN Human Rights Workplace mentioned earlier than the court docket choice on Friday. “Certainly, there has already been a chilling impact, with human rights defenders and humanitarian organisations compelled to halt their human rights work in Greece and different EU nations.”

These on trial included distinguished Syrian human rights employee Sarah Mardini, a refugee and aggressive swimmer whose sister Yusra Mardini was a part of the refugee swim crew on the Olympic Video games in 2016 and 2021. The sisters’ story was made right into a Netflix film.

Sarah Mardini, who was not current at Friday’s listening to, and fellow volunteer Sean Binder, who was in Lesbos to attend the trial, spent greater than three months in jail on the island after their 2018 arrest on misdemeanour expenses that included espionage, forgery and illegal use of radio frequencies.

The court docket on Friday accepted objections by defence attorneys that the prosecution had failed to stick to correct process in submitting the fees. The defence efficiently argued that prosecution paperwork weren’t translated for the international defendants and the espionage expenses have been obscure.

The court docket dismissed the fees over radio frequencies as a result of the legislation they have been filed beneath has since been abolished.

‘Many authorized errors’

In essence, the choice means the misdemeanour case has collapsed as a result of the five-year statute of limitations on the espionage and forgery expenses expires in early February and the prosecution is unlikely to have sufficient time to refile the case.

Nonetheless, one Greek defendant nonetheless faces a misdemeanour depend of forgery, and Sarah Mardini and Binder are nonetheless beneath investigation over felony expenses.

“It’s a step. It’s the first recognition that there have been many authorized errors that violated the essence of a good trial,” defence lawyer Cleo Papapantoleon mentioned. “The choice is necessary for us, and we count on the identical to occur with the investigation into the felonies, for which there’s additionally no proof.”

The case was initially set to proceed in 2021 however was postponed over procedural points.

“At the moment’s choice provides the authorities a brand new alternative to place an finish to this ordeal and proper their very own wrongdoing by dropping the entire expenses, together with the extra severe felony expenses which nonetheless await them,” mentioned Nils Muiznieks, director of Amnesty Worldwide’s European Regional Workplace.

Greece, which noticed about one million folks arrive on its shores from neighbouring Turkey on the top of a refugee disaster in 2015, has clamped down on migration, erecting a fence alongside a lot of its land border with Turkey and rising sea patrols close to its islands.

Greek officers say they’ve a strict however honest migration coverage. In addition they deny, regardless of rising proof on the contrary, conducting unlawful abstract deportations of individuals arriving on Greek territory with out permitting them to use for asylum, a process often known as “pushbacks”.