Twenty-four volunteers with a search-and-rescue group face felony charges, including facilitating illegal entry and money laundering, for helping migrants on Lesbos island between 2016 and 2018. Rights groups warn the trial is politically motivated, and that saving lives at sea is being mischaracterized as migrant smuggling.
Twenty-four aid workers went on trial in Greece on Thursday (December 4), facing charges including migrant smuggling, accusations that human rights groups say are unfounded and aimed at criminalizing assistance to refugees traveling to Europe.
The defendants, members of the Emergency Response Center International (ERCI), a non-profit search-and-rescue organization that operated on Lesbos from 2016 to 2018, could receive multiyear prison sentences. The hearing on Thursday comes seven years after the arrests of the 24 aid workers.
The felony charges against them include participating in a criminal group that allegedly facilitated the unlawful entry of migrants, as well as money laundering related to the organization’s financing. Greek police in 2018 said the activists had collected information about refugee flows using maritime radio signals and used encrypted messaging apps, and provided direct assistance to organized trafficking groups.
"The case depends on deeply flawed logic," Human Rights Watch announced in a statement in response to the trial. "Saving lives at sea is mischaracterized as migrant smuggling, so the search-and-rescue group is a criminal organization, and therefore, the group's legitimate fundraising is money laundering."
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Who are the defendants?
Among the defendants is Sarah Mardini, one of the two Syrian sisters who, in 2015, helped save fellow refugees by towing their sinking dinghy to safety and whose story later inspired the 2022 Netflix film The Swimmers. Sean Binder, another defendant, is a German national who started volunteering with ERCI in 2017. Both were detained in 2018 and spent more than 100 days in custody before being released pending further legal proceedings.
The Lesbos court proceedings take place at a time when EU members, including Greece, which received over a million arrivals between 2015 and 2016, are implementing stricter migration policies.
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Greece tightens controls on borders, seas, and asylum requests
Greece has increasingly adopted a more stringent approach to migration. Since 2019, the center-right government has strengthened border security through fences and maritime patrols, and in July, it temporarily halted the processing of asylum claims from migrants arriving from North Africa.
Under a 2021 law aimed at preventing large-scale migration from the Middle East and Asia, anyone assisting migrants in reaching Greek shores could face charges such as facilitating illegal entry or supporting a criminal organization. In 2023, a Greek court dismissed espionage charges against the defendants.
Human rights organizations have denounced the case as unfounded and lacking credible evidence.
"The trial's result will define if humanitarian aid will be judicially protected from absurd charges or whether it will be left to the maelstrom of arbitrary narratives by prosecuting authorities," news agency Reuters cited defence lawyer Zacharias Kesses as saying.
With Reuters
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