A rescue worker and migrants arriving at Lesbos island, Greece, October 2015. Photo: EPA/FILIP SINGER.
Lawyers and human rights organisations have welcomed Thursday’s verdict by a Greek court, which acquitted 24 humanitarian workers, putting an end to a judicial saga that started seven years ago.
The case unfolded during the 2015-2018 refugee crisis, when the Greek island of Lesbos in the South Aegean was at the epicentre of migration flows. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2015 alone, 856,723 people arrived in Greece by sea and 4,907 by land.
The 24 humanitarian workers were accused, among other things, of forming and joining a criminal organisation, facilitating the illegal entry of third-country nationals and money laundering.
Zacharias Kesses, a lawyer for two of the defendants, told BIRN on Friday that the case was an attempt to criminalise solidarity and demonise humanitarian organisations, including Greeks and foreigners who took part in migrant rescue operations.
“2,897 days were needed for justice to be served and the false narrative of the authorities to be overturned … Although the charges were factually and legally unfounded, the criminal justice system unnecessarily delayed the end of the captivity of the accused,” Kesses said.
“The … Criminal Appeals Court of the North Aegean, with a courageous decision, overturned the injustice and dismissed the charges. We can only face the judicial end of the case with joy and sadness, as the impact of the prosecution was decisive and led hundreds of citizens to abandon the field of providing humanitarian aid,” he added.
Among those acquitted was Sarah Mardini, whose escape from the Syrian war with her sister, Yusra, became the basis of the 2022 Netflix film The Swimmers, and members of the Greek emergency response and humanitarian aid non-profit ERCI.
“Saving human lives is not a crime… We never did anything illegal because if helping people is a crime, then we are all criminals,” Mardini said after the verdict, AFP news agency reported.
The high-profile trial attracted international attention and led to the imprisonment of some of the plaintiffs. “They [the authorities] succeeded in making all the organisations leave Lesvos and making them afraid to come to help, so that they could not monitor the crimes that were happening in the Aegean all these years, the pushbacks,” Dimitris Choulis, a lawyer who deals with migration, told BIRN.
“Expelling … every witness who could have recorded these acts was not even a coincidence, and all this demonization of NGOs is a classic characteristic of any authoritarian regime,” Choulis added.
The European Court of Human Rights in January 2025 found Greece responsible for a “systematic practice of pushbacks” in 2019 and 2020. Rights watchdog Human Rights Watch has documented pushbacks in Greece since 2008, well before the so-called migrant crisis hit the headlines in late 2015 and early 2016.
On Thursday, Human Rights Watch said the acquittals were “a vindication for the defendants but are also bittersweet”.
“These abusive prosecutions have virtually shut down lifesaving work, even as people continue to drown in the Aegean. The Greek authorities should stop criminalizing solidarity, end pushbacks, and prioritize saving lives,” Eva Cosse, Human Rights Watch’s senior researcher in the Europe and Central Asia division, said.
