Rights groups hail acquittal after seven years of aid workers prosecuted during Greece refugee crisis

Two dozen aid workers, who had faced up to 20 years in prison if found guilty of smuggling migrants into Greece, have been acquitted by a court on Lesbos.The verdict was met with cheers, tears and cries of jubilation as the presiding judge announced the words that would end a seven-year legal ordeal for the humanitarians. All 24 had engaged in rescue work on the Aegean island at the height of the refugee crisis.“It took 2,897 days for the obvious to be delivered by the justice system,” said Zacharias Kesses, the lawyer who represented six of the defendants. “Today, the three-member felony court of appeal of the North Aegean delivered a courageous judgment.”The European Parliament had described the prosecutions as “the largest case of the criminalisation of solidarity in Europe” and proceedings had been closely watched internationally.Rights groups had spoken of a test-case moment for the treatment of humanitarians across the continent when tolerance for aid work has waned as migrant policies have hardened. Greece – a frontier state – has for years been accused of forcibly expelling migrants from its land and sea borders, with pushbacks especially prevalent in the Aegean. The centre-right government of the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has called the policies “strict but fair” although it has denied the expulsions.Ahead of Thursday’s court proceedings – resuming six weeks after the criminal trial began in Mytilene – Human Rights Watch called the case a “perverse misrepresentation of life-saving humanitarian work”. It had urged Greek authorities to drop the “baseless” charges.“The acquittals are a vindication for the defendants but are also bittersweet,” said Eva Cosse, a senior researcher in the group’s Europe and Central Asia division. “These abusive prosecutions have virtually shut down lifesaving work even as people continue to drown in the Aegean. The Greek authorities should stop criminalising solidarity, end pushbacks and prioritise saving lives.”The defendants included Sara Mardini, the Syrian refugee immortalised in the Netflix movie The Swimmers, and Sean Binder, a German-born Irishman who, like Mardini, spent 100 days behind bars after his arraignment in 2018. At the time of their arrests they ranged in age, with most of the aid workers in their 20s and 30s but some in their early 70s.Bonded by the same idealistic desire to help at a time when the then-bankrupt country was struggling to cope with an influx of Syrians fleeing civil war, all had volunteered with the search-and-rescue organisation, ERCI. Now dissolved, the aid group had been based in Lesbos, among the islands closest to the shores of Turkey that had fast become a magnet for refugees.Greek police claimed the aid workers had facilitated the illegal entry of migrants by monitoring maritime radio signals and using encrypted messaging apps to gain advance notification of the location of smugglers’ boats heading from the Turkish coast.Among the lesser charges the defendants had also faced was espionage. In January 2023, a court threw out that accusation, citing insufficient proof, with supporters hailing the dismissal as indicative of the volunteers’ innocence. Rights groups had described the charge as “farcical”.Earlier, while giving evidence before the court, defendants had argued that what they had been involved in was legitimate human rights work of helping people on the move, and often at risk of drowning, as they endeavoured to reach safety.Reacting to the judgment, Binder said: “The court reached the only decision it could today based on the limited legal basis of the charges and the flimsy evidence the prosecutor presented.”Binder described the gruelling effects of lives put on hold by the prolonged criminal proceedings. First detained at the age of 24, the trainee barrister is now 31.“It is a huge relief that I will not spend the next 20 years in a prison cell, but at the same time it is troubling that this should ever have been a possibility,” he said.“Today it was made clear, as it should always have been, that providing life-saving humanitarian assistance is an obligation, not a crime. That using WhatsApp is normal, not evidence of criminality. That buying laundry machines for a refugee camp does not make someone a money launderer. This acquittal must set a precedent.”Amnesty International, which had sent delegations to Lesbos to monitor the trial, said it hoped Thursday’s decision would send a “strong signal” to Greece and other European countries that “defending human rights should be protected and celebrated, not punished”.