The trial of 24 aid workers including Syrian refugee Sarah Mardini, who with her Olympic swimmer sister inspired a fiction broadcast on Netflix, resumed on Tuesday in Greece in chaotic conditions denounced by NGOs.
Started in November 2021 before being immediately adjourned, this high-profile trial was again briefly interrupted when it resumed before the court of Mytilene, on the island of Lesbos, due to the absence of one of the accused and of his lawyer.
Espionage charges
He was then able to resume with the lawyers' pleas and the President of the Court specified that only the charges of "
espionage
" against these humanitarian workers would be examined.
The proceedings initiated for money laundering, migrant smuggling and fraud will be examined later when the investigation is completed, said the president of the Court.
This chaotic hearing aroused great dissatisfaction, in particular from the defendants and human rights NGOs, while the proceedings were launched more than four years ago.
"
The slowness of the procedure is, in my view, a tactic of the Greek authorities to dissuade rescue NGOs from operating on the Greek islands,
" said Wies de Graeve, Amnesty International representative and international observer in the trial.
“
These endless postponements of the legal process leave the lives of young people in suspense
,” he added.
Read alsoYusra, Syrian refugee: from Damascus to the Rio Olympics
“
All charges against us whether for espionage or money laundering do not hold water.
This trial has a political objective
,” also denounced one of the defendants, the Dutchman Pieter Wittenberg.
Sarah Mardini, a young Syrian refugee in Berlin since 2015, was not present at the hearing, the Greek authorities having not authorized her to return to Greece according to her lawyer, Zacharias Kesses.
The story of Sarah Mardini and her sister, the Olympic swimmer Yusra, has aroused immense interest to the point that they are featured in the film "
Les Nageuses
" which traces their perilous crossing of Europe in 2015 and broadcast on the Netflix platform.
In August 2018 when she was arrested, the young woman was working as a volunteer for the NGO ERCI on this Greek island which saw hundreds of thousands of refugees, particularly Syrians, flocking in dramatic conditions in 2015 and 2016. Sarah Mardini spent three months in prison in Greece before being able to return to Berlin.
