Two dozen humanitarian workers on trial for participating in search and rescue operations on the island of Lesvos accused of smuggling migrants were acquitted by a Greek court on Thursday evening.
After more than seven years of legal limbo, the Lesvos Court of Appeal cleared the defendants of charges, which included membership of a criminal organisation, facilitating the entry of third-country nationals into Greece and money laundering, for a period from 2016 to 2021.
The group faced up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Presiding judge Vassilis Papathanassiou told the court that the defendants would be acquitted because their intention was “not to commit criminal acts but to provide humanitarian aid”, according to Greek media reports.
Prior to the verdict, the prosecutor told the court that the charges ultimately lacked evidence, recommending the defendants’ acquittal. Greek media reported that he underlined a lack of evidence to prove the existence of a hierarchical structure which would constitute a criminal organisation.
One aspect of the prosecution’s arguments initially centred around the defendants’ use of WhatsApp — a popular encrypted messaging service owned by Meta — to communicate about migrant boat arrivals, which was presented as evidence of a criminal conspiracy.
Yet, this was also dismissed by the judge who ruled that “a communication group on the internet cannot be regarded as a criminal organisation.”
Euronews has contacted Greek authorities for comment, but not received a response at time of publication.
Once a tourist hotspot, Lesvos became the primary entry point for individuals and small boats seeking to reach Europe in 2015, the year that marked the peak of the continent’s migration crisis.
While Greek authorities said the protracted case was a matter of national border security, rights groups labelled it “baseless” from the outset and were supportive of the defendants.
“There was huge applause in the room after the verdict was handed, defendants were falling in each others’ arms,” Wies de Graeve, Amnesty International’s Belgium executive director who was on site inside the Lesvos courtroom, told Euronews.
De Graeve qualified the outcome as “bittersweet”, describing the “heartbreaking” testimonies shared by defendants on the stand, displaying “the trial’s psychological, financial and emotional implications on their lives.”
‘Huge relief not to spend next 20 years in a cell’
Seán Binder, a German-Irish citizen who travelled to Lesvos in 2017 — in his early 20s at the time — was among those acquitted.
He worked as a search and rescue volunteer with the now-defunct Emergency Rescue Centre International (ERCI), a registered Greek humanitarian NGO.
“It is a huge relief that I will not spend the next 20 years in a prison cell, but at the same time, it is troubling that this should ever have been a possibility”, said Binder.
“Today, it was made clear, as it should always have been, that providing life-saving humanitarian assistance is an obligation, not a crime”, he added.
Speaking to Euronews in December, Binder explained that he had spent “most of his time on ‘spotting shifts’, looking out at the Turkish mainland a few (nautical) miles away, where smugglers push people into boats and send them over to seek asylum in Europe.”
“The boats don’t want to be caught, so there aren’t any bright lights. Instead, we would be on the lookout for distress calls, screaming and shouting. I communicated with the coast guard weekly and would inform the port authority when we went out to sea,” Binder recalled at the time.
Binder’s work came to a halt when he was arrested alongside Sarah Mardini, whose story of swimming across a stretch of the Mediterranean was fictionalised in a 2018 Netflix film.
In 2023, the pair and a group of defendants were acquitted of misdemeanour crimes which included alleged forgery, illegally listening to radio frequencies and espionage. Outstanding misdemeanour charges for 16 other defendants were dropped the following year.
Aid workers slam Europe’s migration enforcement
Humanitarian groups say this trial has deterred the work of humanitarian and rescue organisations on the Aegean islands, where the scale of such operations has been dramatically reduced.
They also argue it epitomises broader European pushback against individuals and organisations assisting migrants and asylum seekers: an estimated 124 others faced similar judicial proceedings in Europe in 2024 alone, according to Brussels-based NGO PICUM.
Reacting to the verdict, Eve Geddie, Amnesty’s Director of International European Institutions Office urged the EU to “introduce stronger safeguards against the criminalization of humanitarian assistance under EU law.”
In recent years, European migration policy has shifted as the 27-member bloc’s leaders increasingly embraced firmer views and explored new ways to curb arrivals.
Greece and its islands have recently experienced a fresh uptick in migrant boat arrivals, with more than 1,000 migrants arriving on Crete and nearby Gavdos mostly from North Africa, according to Greek authorities.
Smugglers operating from Libya increasingly favour Crete and Gavdos as destinations due to improved weather conditions and proximity to the North African coast, Greek officials said.
Greece recorded 39,495 illegal border crossings by the end of October 2025, an 18% decrease from 48,415 arrivals in the same period in 2024, according to official figures.
