Category: Regions
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On the 6th February 2025, in a remarkable decision, the Court of Mytilene has acquitted a client of the Legal Centre of Lesvos, A.H., of the charges of smuggling and causing a shipwreck. A.H., a Palestinian refugee from the Gaza Strip, was prosecuted for attempting to cross the EU border to seek asylum. The prosecution…
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On January 29, 2025, a teenager named M. Elfallah had to appear before the juvenile court in Crete to face charges of “facilating unauthorized entry” (smuggling). On November 21, 2022, at the age of 15, he boarded a large fishing vessel in Libya with his father and hundreds of people in an attempt to reach…
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Today, February 18, 2025, Jawhar A. was on trial at the Court of Appeal of Kalamata. He was arrested on a boat on September 15, 2022 and was wrongly sentenced in the first instance to 270 years in prison for smuggling 89 people seeking protection. He himself came to Europe on this boat as a…
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As the appeal trial of Homayoun Sabetara approaches on 24 September, the Captain Support Network together with the undersigned organisations urgently call for his freedom and for an end to the systematic criminalisation of migrants under Greece’s broad anti-smuggling laws. In his original trial in 2021, Homayoun, a migrant fleeing Iran, was sentenced to 18…
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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,…
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M.A. reached Greece with his family on 10 September 2023 in a rubber dinghy. He is from Aleppo (Syria) and is in danger there because he is wanted by the Syrian authorities. However, he, himself a protection seeker, was charged with facilitating the illegal entry (smuggling) of 48 other protection seekers into Greek territory because…
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K.A., who fled from Graza, reached the Greek island of Samos by boat on 22/09/23 to apply for asylum. Instead, after his arrival he was accused of transporting 35 “third-country nationals” without the right to enter Greek territory (“smuggling”).The accusation was based on two witnesses who testified before the police. K.A. denied being the driver…
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On 15. May 2024, A.A., a young man from Palestine, faced a trial on the Greek Island Rhodes. He, himself a refugee, forced to steer the boat at gun, was accused of smuggling more than 30 people in a boat from Turkey to Europe. Under Greek law, he was threatened with a decades-long prison sentence,…
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Following a three-week trial, Ibrahima Bah, a teenager from Senegal, has been convicted by an all-white jury at Canterbury Crown Court. The jury unanimously found him guilty of facilitating illegal entry to the UK, and by a 10-2 majority of manslaughter by gross negligence. This conviction followed a previous trial in July 2023 in which the jury…
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Since 2018, the number of people crossing the English Channel on ‘small boats’ in search of safety has risen year on year. As others have argued, including elsewhere on this blog, this is a manufactured ‘crisis’ of the British government’s own making. Decades of securitisation in the juxtaposed controls in Calais have continually forced people…