Greek Trial Opens of Aid Workers Charged with Trafficking Migrants

The trial in Mytilene, Lesvos, opened on Thursday of 24 aid workers from Greece and elsewhere accused of complicity in a criminal organization.

It is alleged that, from 2016 to 2018, the aid workers participated in the maritime rescue of migrants, incurring charges of trafficking, fraud, participation in a criminal organization and even money laundering, which could lead to sentences of 25 years in prison.

Among those charged are Seán Binder, a 27-year-old German, and Sarah Mardini, a 25-year-old Syrian refugee, who lives in Germany.

Mardini and her sister Yusra became known in the international community in 2015, when, in an attempt to cross the Greek-Turkish sea border with other refugees, they spotted an unmanned boat with 18 refugees; they fell into the water and swam to Lesvos, which saved the lives of the passengers.

"It is a very slippery path to criminalize humanitarian action; the creation of internal enemies erodes democracy itself," Kostis Papaioannou, a former chair of Greece's National Commission for Human Rights, told BIRN.

Of the 24 defendants, only 10 appeared before the court., The rest were absent either because they were not summoned or because they were not found. Mardini was not present for the trial as she is barred from entering Greece.

A local news outlet, To Nisi, said the three-member Criminal Court of Mytilene announced that the trial was being referred to the Criminal Court of Appeal because one of the accused is a lawyer.

A Greek police statement of August 2018 stated the criminal charges were justified. "In the context of many months of thorough investigation, the action of an organised criminal network was fully verified," it said.

However, in September that year, the Greek...