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Athens – It all began the night of 18 June, with an alert sent to the “Alarm Phone” centre, a hotline providing aid to migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean. At one in the morning, the NGO broadcast the message on its Twitter account: “In the Aegean, sinking boat near Mykonos”. They clarified, “We are in contact with a group of 80 people in distress to the southwest of the island of Mykonos. We have alerted the coastguard who have told us that they have begun a search.” A few hours later, the Minister of Migration and Asylum, Notis Mitrakis, posted on Twitter: “8 migrants reported missing and 104 rescued in the Cyclades, aboard a sailing boat travelling from the Turkish coast to Europe. Turkey can do a better job by working with Europe and Greece to protect human life and eradicate smuggling networks.”
The day after the rescue, a source in the Greek Ministry of the Navy clarified to Voxeurop, “An inquiry is underway to determine the role played by the refugees on board. Six will be tried soon.” Their crime? “They are suspected of having been at the helm; they collaborated to sail the boat,” continued the source. “They are probably people-smugglers.” In a way, the sentence has already been passed before the trial has even taken place.
The affair is just another in a lengthening list of trials involving migrants. And the trials are always the same: expeditious. “As soon as the Greek coastguard intercepts a migrant boat, they look to see who among the migrants was at the helm,” explains lawyer Alexandros Georgoulis. He offers as proof the cases of the migrants that he represents, notably on the islands of Chios, Samos and Lesbos, a few kilometres from Turkey. They all have a similar story: that of exiles condemned for trying to save lives.
That is the case for Mohammad Hanad Abdi, a Somalian born in 1993. He tells his story from prison on the island of Chios. He had to flee his native country after going through a forced marriage, being injured in an attack on his uncle perpetrated by the Somalian Islamic terrorist group al-Shabaab, and being disowned by his family. “So, I decided to flee, to leave for Greece. First, I went to Turkey, by plane,” he explains. In December 2020, in Izmir, he found a smuggler and paid €450 for a journey to Greece.
He discovered the gravity of the situation once aboard the boat. “There were 34 of us. After a while, the smuggler left the boat. I took the helm even though I had no idea how to steer. We contacted the Turkish coastguard. But it was the Greek coastguard that stopped us.” The boat had already begun to take on water. Two migrants were swept overboard without the other passengers realising. Georgoulis, who represents the Somalian, confirms: “I met a lot of other passengers – they all tell the same story and say that Mohammed saved them.”
However, when the vessel was intercepted by the Greek coastguard, Mohammad Hanad Abdi was arrested. On 13 May 2021, his first trial took place. None of the other passengers was called upon to testify. After a hearing of approximately 45 minutes and a deliberation of an hour and a half, the verdict was announced. Mohammad was sentenced to 142 years in prison. “The judges drew on a Greek law from 2014, Article 30 of Law 4521/2014, to be precise,” explains Georgoulis. “Any person that takes the helm is considered a smuggler and faces a sentence of 15 years per person transported and a life sentence for each person who dies in the course of the journey.”
Judges used the same law to condemn two Afghan migrants, Akif Rasuli and Amir Zahiri, to 50 years in prison at their first trial. The pair arrived in Greece in March 2020, fleeing the war in Afghanistan. They paid a smuggler to take them from Turkey to Greece, gateway to the European Union. As in Mohammad Hanad Abdi’s case, the smuggler left the makeshift vessel as soon as the migrants were at sea. Rasuli and Zahiri took the helm, and the coastguard intercepted the boat. They admit that they sailed the boat to avoid capsizing. They were condemned after a trial that lasted less than two minutes. The only witnesses heard were the Greek coastguards.
“In Greece, migrants are treated like the most heinous criminals. They receive longer sentences than those received by the members of neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn who have been accused of murder and participating in a criminal organisation"
Stelios Kouloglou, Syriza
“They were accused of having facilitated the illegal entry of asylum seekers into Greek territory, and having caused the deaths of other migrants aboard the vessel, and they were sentenced to 50 years of prison each,” explains their lawyer Dimitris Choulis. But, in the words of MEP Clare Daly, their expedited sentencing is compounded by “psychological torture” – the judicial procedure. Firstly, the Greek justice system has continually postponed Rasuli and Zahiri’s appeal. It should have been held on 17 March, was postponed to 18 March, then to 7 April… and finally to 8 December.
Then, on 7 April, their lawyers demanded that the two migrants be granted parole; the presiding judge at Mytilene refused, although the prosecutor had agreed. “In Greece, migrants are treated like the most heinous criminals. They receive longer sentences than those received by the members of neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn who have been accused of murder and participating in a criminal organisation,” said Stelios Kouloglou, a Greek MEP for the left-wing Syriza party.
Criminalisation is also the term used by the researcher Valeria Hänsel, specialist in migration at the University of Göttingen in Germany. “This very symbolic criminalisation of migration can only function because it is sanctioned by the EU,” she says. “There is a parallel between the migration policy applied in Greece and that applied by the EU. Moreover, according to her research, “the sentences imposed on migrants on Lesbos average 48.65 years, and the fines average €396,000.”
Migrants accused of “smuggling” are the second biggest population in Greek prisons. German MEP from The Left Party, Cornelia Ernst, says “This criminalisation, like pushbacks [forced deportations of migrants at sea, contrary to international law] form part of the policy applied by many EU member states, as in Greece, as in Croatia, or in Spain… they have been normalised despite being illegal. They prevent the migrant from submitting their application for asylum, and from having that application assessed.”
French Green MEP Damien Carême agrees: “We are currently witnessing a rise in the criminalisation of migration and of solidarity with migrants in the EU.” Drawing on a 57-page report commissioned by his party on the criminalisation of solidarity across Europe, he clarifies, “these political trials should be condemned and should cease. They aim to discourage any kind of solidarity toward exiles. We cannot tolerate these abuses that trample both the values of the EU and fundamental human rights.”
Even the United Nations is alarmed by the behaviour of the Greek authorities. In February, the UN’s High Commission on Refugees stated that it was “concerned by the use of the harshest sanctions against asylum seekers that are being prosecuted for alleged involvement in trafficking.” On 22 June, Mary Lawlor, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders for the UN, conducted an official country visit to Greece.
She declared: “the current government approach is defined by a conception of migration as a question of security and of prevention. This has created a sense of fear for refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, and the human rights defenders who act in solidarity with them – in particular a fear of criminalisation.” The Special Rapporteur thus considers these migrants are doubly victimised: they are forced to leave their countries, and their European exile begins with an imprisonment. In short, they have become the scapegoats of migration politics that are slowly becoming harsher and harsher, throughout Europe. To the point that the justice system has now become just another cog in a system designed to reject migrants.
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