Lesbos Island: The founder of a Greek NGO facing charges for allegedly helping migrants illegally enter the country was arrested on Wednesday, police said.
Panos Moraitis, who set up Emergency Response Centre International and was until recently the CEO of maritime security firm Aspida, gave himself up on the island of Lesbos after being sought for three weeks. Moraitis is expected to appear before a prosecutor on Friday.
ERCI’s field director Nassos Karakitsos, programme director Mirella Alexou and two volunteers, German-Irish national Sean Binder and Syrian refugee Sarah Mardini, were arrested earlier and have spent weeks in pre-trial detention.
Requests for their conditional release have been turned down, the volunteers’ lawyer Haris Petsikos said.
The police are seeking 30 people overall in what they say is an operation to dismantle a “criminal network” on Lesbos, where some 11,000 migrants are living in camps and rented accommodation. Police accuse ERCI members of offering direct assistance to people traffickers and asking for advance warning of arrivals without passing on the information to authorities. ERCI has denied the accusations and stresses it had closely worked with the authorities to save lives for the past three years. Mardini and her sister Yusra’s plight to reach Lesbos from Turkey made the news in 2015, when they used their swimming skills to pull to safety their water-logged boat with another 18 people onboard. The following year Yusra, now a UNHCR goodwill ambassador, participated on the refugee team at the Rio 2016 Olympics and Mardini went on to win a scholarship at Bard College in Berlin. — AFP
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
