On 17 June 2024, two young men from Sudan and a man from Afghanistan who entered Greece with his wife and baby were on trial in Samos. They reached Greece on 10/01/2024 with a rubber dinghy. Upon arrival, they were arrested and charged with the unauthorised smuggling of 38 third-country nationals into Greek territory. However, they are also protection seekers who have applied for asylum in Greece, like everyone else on the boat. According to the Geneva Convention, they should not be criminalised for their unauthorised entry.

Lawyers Dimitris Choulis and Alexandros Georgoulis from the Human Rights Legal Project (HRLP) Samos pleaded in court that it was a typical case of self-travelling, with everyone doing their best to survive. With this defense the threat of decades in imprisonment was prevented: All three defendants were found innocent by the court as there were doubts about their guilt and therefore they could not be convicted.

In a second trial, two minors who reached Greece on 24 December 2023 together with many other people seeking protection were also charged with illegally smuggling third-country nationals into Greece. The lawyer Dimitris Choulis (HRLP) represented the defendants. The court referred the case to the juvenile court due to lack of jurisdiction. This led to the release of one of the defendants, who was wrongly charged as an adult.