Greece Drops Criminal Charges Against Aid Workers Who Rescued Migrants at Sea

Greece has dropped criminal charges against dozens of international aid workers, ranging from spying to facilitating what authorities had called illegal entry into the country through the island of Lesbos, court documents showed on Tuesday.

Most of the 35 people, accused in 2020 of setting up a criminal organization and providing support to traffickers ferrying migrants, were German nationals. The rest included people from Norway, Austria, France, Spain, Switzerland and Bulgaria. They were arrested and had denied wrongdoing at the time.

The case was dropped due to inadequate evidence, the documents seen by Reuters showed.

"The detailed investigation of the case file has resoundingly quashed the police narrative which was pure fiction," said Zaharias Kesses, a lawyer representing some of the aid workers.

Greece was on the front line of a huge surge of refugees and migrants to Europe in 2015 and 2016, many through its outlying islands close to Turkey, including Lesbos. That flow has since ebbed.

The case was based on a 2020 operation by the Greek intelligence service EYP and the anti-terrorism unit with the code name Alkmini, and involved undercover agents who travelled as migrants from Turkey to Lesbos.

Greek intelligence services were initially involved because the workers, who were using an alarm phone for migrants and asylum seekers in need of rescue at sea, were thought to have passed on information on Greek coast guard movements and vessel equipment.

But a magistrate's investigation concluded the information and visual material collected were not confidential.

"There is not enough evidence to support the accusations against the defendants," the documents said.

(Reuters - Reporting by Yannis Souliotis, Writing by Renee Maltezou; Editing by Bernadette Baum)