‘Hitting the right nail’: Refugee rescue group defiant as Greece targets it
Aegean Boat Report founder Tommy Olsen insists he is defending the rule of law, as Greece opens trial against him.
Athens, Greece – To Greek authorities, he is the nefarious Norwegian mastermind of an international criminal organisation “operationally structured to commit repeated crimes”, which he secretly controls from his hometown of Tromso, north of the Arctic Circle.
A Greek court will open trial proceedings on Tuesday against Tommy Olsen to decide who is right.
The public prosecutor on the island of Kos, in the east Aegean, has accused Olsen of conspiring to smuggle refugees into Greece and to conceal them from authorities.
“They looked at what the Greek authorities described I had done, and they said, ‘There’s nothing illegal here. It’s actually protected activities,’” Olsen told Al Jazeera.
Human rights organisations see it as Greece’s latest attempt to silence independent monitors of human rights abuses, for which the country has previously been convicted at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Pushbacks are illegal turnarounds of potential asylum seekers. Under the Geneva Convention of 1951, signatories, including Greece, are obliged to provide an asylum hearing to anyone who requests one.
“We’ve asked NGOs in the field … to provide information about pushbacks. This is not hearsay. This is a signed witness statement that can stand up in court. We record these and we can help the witness go to the prosecutor,” Gavouneli told Al Jazeera.
Last month, the Council of Europe, Europe’s principal human rights body, said retraining of Greek law enforcement officers and other measures “do not yet appear adequate to comprehensively address the ‘systematic practice of “pushbacks”‘ identified by the [ECHR], while serious concerns continue to be raised in this regard by a large number of different sources”.
That, said Olsen’s lawyer, is why Aegean Boat Report’s work is undesirable from the perspective of Greek authorities.
In the last eight years, prosecutors have shut down two organisations by arresting their members and charging them with trafficking and espionage.
Smuggling charges against Mare Liberum, a German search and rescue group, were also shelved for lack of evidence in 2024.
Dive deeper
- Aegean Boat Report founder Tommy Olsen insists he is defending the rule of law, as Greece opens trial against him.
- Athens, Greece – To Greek authorities, he is the nefarious Norwegian mastermind of an international criminal organisation “operationally structured to commit repeated crimes”, which he secretly controls from his hometown of Tromso, north of
- A Greek court will open trial proceedings on Tuesday against Tommy Olsen to decide who is right.
- The public prosecutor on the island of Kos, in the east Aegean, has accused Olsen of conspiring to smuggle refugees into Greece and to conceal them from authorities.
- “They looked at what the Greek authorities described I had done, and they said, ‘There’s nothing illegal here. It’s actually protected activities,’” Olsen told Al Jazeera.