Following a two-and-a-half-year legal battle and acquittal in the Greek courts, a team of lawyers with the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) led by Violeta Moreno-Lax, acting on behalf of Salam Kamal-Aldeen, founder of the non-profit Team Humanity, filed an unprecedented application to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg challenging Greece’s crackdown on the search and rescue actors of refugees at sea. On 14 January 2016, Mr Aldeen was operating a rescue boat, the Team Humanity, from the island of Lesbos, helping the Hellenic Coast Guard (HCG) to locate and assist three migrant dinghies in distress. Although these had already been intercepted and pulled back by the Turkish authorities by the time the Team Humanity arrived close to the rim of Greek territorial waters, Mr Aldeen and his crew were arrested and charged with “attempted smuggling”. The investigative judge ruled on the basis of Mr Aldeen “having decided to commit”, “with decision and intent” and “as a repeated crime”, the felony of illegal transport of irregular migrants into Greek territory without authorisation in the degree of tentative. No proof was adduced, the judge referring to Mr Aldeen’s use of “rescue as a pretext”. Their rescue vessel was (and remains) confiscated and severely restrictive measures were imposed on Mr Aldeen and his crew, which remain unremedied to date.

The application filed with the Strasbourg Court exposed the illegality of the Greek authorities’ crackdown on human rights defenders who are working to preserve the integrity of the international system of search and rescue, under which  captains of all vessels are bound to render assistance to persons in distress at sea, regardless of their nationality or legal status. The application thus challenges Greece’s reliance on sanctions and anti-smuggling regulations to bring solidarity-based humanitarian action to a halt. Also questioned was the legitimacy of Greece’s conduct exposing Mr Aldeen to a minimum of ten years’ imprisonment for his life-saving activities. Such repressive measures, aimed at curbing maritime crossings, have been adopted as part of the implementation of the EU-Turkey “deal” of March 2016.

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GLAN filed the legal application with support from the Irish Centre for Human Rights and two independent Greek lawyers, Danai Papachristopoulou and Zoe Kasapi. The submission draws from Violeta Moreno-lax’ academic research and is based on evidence compiled by the Search and Rescue Observatory for the Mediterranean (SAROBMED), including documents obtained by Mr Aldeen from the Greek courts and other authorities, as well as reports from international and non-governmental organisations, documenting the shift in policy in Greece and the European Union to criminalise rescue at sea.

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