Norwegian police on Wednesday told Tommy Olsen, founder of the Norwegian campaign group Aegean Boat Report, ABR, that Greece has issued a European arrest warrant for him, along with an extradition request.
The warrant was issued back in December but Olsen has not yet received it, and may not do so until a formal arrest procedure is carried out. Greece accuses him of participating in a criminal organisation that helped migrants to cross from Turkey to Greece in 2021.
“Although Tommy Olsen has provided evidence proving his non-involvement in the alleged acts, the Prosecutor’s Office decided to issue an arrest warrant, which was pending for over a year,” Olsen’s lawyer, Zacharias Kesses, told BIRN.
“This is the deliberate targeting of a human rights defender with the aim of intimidation and silence,” Olsen said in a press release, adding that ABR has never assisted people to cross from Turkey to Greece.
ABR is an independent monitoring organisation documenting maritime arrivals by refugees and migrants, distress situations and human rights violations in the Aegean Sea.
ABR communicates with authorities “when people in distress or newly arrived are located, so that they can access the asylum procedures guaranteed under international and European law”, Olsen said.
The District Court Prosecution on the Greek island of Kos filed a case in 2021 against Panayote Dimitras, head and founder of the Greek Helsinki Monitor, a non-profit NGO, and Olsen, for informing the Greek authorities about the entry of refugees into Greece and their intention to seek asylum.
Olsen was not arrested, however, as he lives outside Greece. In May 2024, Greece sought to internationalise the warrant. Mary Lawlor, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, wrote on X at the time that Olsen “is being targeted in what appears to be an arbitrary investigation criminalising his work in defence of the rights of migrants”.
Kesses said that the European warrant was another in a series of attempts “to harass civil society and criminalise humanitarian actions. And this one will fall into the void, like all the previous ones.”
The Greek government passed a new migration bill on February 5, which allows for heavy penalties to be imposed on NGOs deemed to be assisting in migrant-trafficking. This caused uproar among human rights defenders, who claim that it effectively criminalises working for NGOs helping migrants.
Greece has long been on the frontline of Europe’s migration crisis and has struggled to deal with large numbers arriving by boat. The European Court of Human Rights in January 2025 found Greece responsible for a “systematic practice of pushbacks [to another country]” of arriving refugees and migrants in 2019 and 2020.