Category: Updates & News
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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 Wednesday, 15 May, 2024, we held a virtual teach-in to #FreePylos9 in solidarity with the nine criminalised survivors of the Pylos shipwreck and with all people on the move facing spurious charges of “facilitation.” The nine defendants accused by the Greek State for the Pylos shipwreck of 14 June 2023, were tried on 21…
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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…
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An important aspect of bordering processes in Italy is to criminalise the facilitation of migration. The first notable instances date back to the 1990s, when people were fleeing political unrest and economic crisis in Albania. It is in these years that the term “scafista”, a derogatory term to describe migrant boat drivers, or captains, was…
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In 2002, EU Directive 2002/90/EC obligated each EU Member State to make it a criminal infraction to intentionally facilitate the unauthorised entry or transit of a person across a border – notably whether or not that person received any financial or material benefit to facilitate the crossing, and whether or not that person was a…