Baseless Felony Charges for Saving Lives at Sea Should End in Acquittal
By Bill Van Esveld and Eva Coss
Two dozen humanitarian workers face trial on the Greek island of Lesbos this week on baseless felony charges that carry 20 years in prison. Prosecutors have hounded the humanitarians for seven years for saving lives at sea, while the European Parliament hascalledthis the largest case of criminalization of solidarity in Europe.
In 2015,up to 10,000asylum seekers and migrants were making theperilous sea crossingfrom Turkey to Lesbos per week.At least 805 people, including 271 children, died or disappearedin the Aegean Sea that year. Emergency Rescue Center International (ERCI), a small nonprofit, started search and rescue operations to support overwhelmed local authorities.
But in 2018, two of ERCIs foreign volunteers werejailedfor 107 days based on a flawed police report depicting rescue work as smuggling and espionage, despite a Hellenic Coast Guard officials statement to the police that the group had regularly notified him when migrants boats were coming. Two Greeks were also later placed in pretrial detention. Human Rights Watchfoundthe charges perversely misrepresent ERCI as a crime ring.
Instead of dropping the case, Greek prosecutors charged 24 people and blundered past basic due process requirements. Some defendants werereportedlynever served. Other indictments weremissing pagesand written in Greek, which some foreign defendants did not understand.
In 2021, the prosecution filedmisdemeanor chargesagainst all the defendants but in thewrong court. One of the foreign volunteers jailed in 2018 was barred from re-entering Greece for her own trial. When the misdemeanor casewas finally heard, it collapsed andall charges were dismissed.
The prosecution is now pursuing three felony charges. But after a years-long investigation found no new evidence, the case depends on deeply-flawed logic: saving lives at sea is mischaracterized as migrant smuggling (felony 1), so the search-and-rescue group is a criminal organization (felony 2), and therefore, the groups legitimate fundraising is money laundering (felony 3).
The case is an acute example of a disturbingtrend in Europe of criminalizing solidaritywith people on the move. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defendersnotedthat rights defenders and humanitarian workers in Greece face the misuse of criminal law against them to a shocking degree.
An acquittal of the defendants will be the only just end to a perverse prosecution that should never have started.
Human Rights Watch
