It was a gloomy midday on Jan. 15, 2026. In a small courtroom in Mytilini, on the Greek island of Lesbos, the highly contentious trial of 24 humanitarians and nonprofit workers was already a few hours underway. The case had become part of the fabric of a narrative about the island’s recent history of migration. Lesbos sits on the edge of the European Union, separated from Turkey by a narrow stretch of sea, and the island has become synonymous with the journeys of hundreds of thousands of people who reached the continent across the last decade.
In 2015, more than a million people reached Europe by sea or land with the hopes of obtaining asylum. Many fled wars and armed conflict in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, while others left behind political persecution or economic strife. Politicians and media called this exodus the “refugee crisis.” The defendants in the Mytilene courthouse stood accused of several serious crimes, including human smuggling. After more than seven years of waiting, they would finally receive a verdict.
In the courtroom, a tall woman with glossy dark hair stood up: Sarah Mardini, a swimmer from Syria who made international headlines in 2015 after she and her sister saved fellow passengers when their boat’s motor failed while crossing from Turkey to Greece. She received asylum in Germany and later returned to Lesbos to volunteer to help displaced people. Like thousands of others had, she and her fellow volunteers translated, passed out blankets to people who arrived on the island’s shores, and provided food to those who had just made the journey.
Everything changed two years later, in August 2018, when Greek authorities arrested Mardini at the island’s airport as she was returning to Germany. Seán Binder, an Irish-born German citizen, was detained at the same time. The pair spent more than 100 days in pre-trial detention. They were among two dozen humanitarian workers arrested on charges including espionage and human smuggling. Many had been working either in medical assistance, as first responders, or were simply secretaries of various NGOs.
Now, more than seven years after she was first arrested, Mardini had her chance to testify in front of a packed courtroom. “In 2015, when I crossed by sea, the coast guard said, ‘Go back to where you came from,’” she said. “I could not go back to where I came from.”
Across the years since Greek authorities first launched their crackdown on the humanitarians, several watchdogs had decried the charges. Human Rights Watch called the trial “baseless” and said the defendants faced the threat of prison for simply “saving lives.” In a report, the European Parliament cited the trial as the most significant instance of criminalizing solidarity in the bloc.
Despite the widespread condemnation, procedural errors routinely delayed the trial and the years rolled on the charges hanging over the defendants’ heads. The criminal proceedings profoundly changed the lives of several defendants. Greek defendant Nassos Karakitsos found himself banned from leaving Greece. Meanwhile, Greek authorities banned Mardini from entering the country early on, preventing her from attending some of the initial trial dates.
The defendants returned to the island in 2021, 2023 and 2025 often only to be told the case would be postponed. Inkstick was at all of these court cases too. The two authors of this article have collectively sat through the trials, reported from the courtyard outside and followed the lives of the defendants across the years.
This January day in 2026 appeared to be a pivotal moment not only for the defendants facing a potential two decades in prison but for Greece and Europe as a whole.A decade ago, some countries in the EU rallied under the mantra “Refugees Welcome” during the deadliest years of the Syrian war, but it wasn’t long before migration became a fiercely debated issue once again. In Greece, border policies and enforcement have become especially harsh throughout this period.
Across the last six years, the country has faced a steady stream of allegations that it illegally deports asylum seekers. In some cases, displaced people have been abducted by masked individuals who put them in life rafts and cast them adrift in Turkish waters. Despite testimony from asylum seekers who were forced from Greek territory, journalistic investigations, and documentation by rights groups, the Greek government has consistently denied wrongdoing and insists its authorities abide by national and international law.
Sonia Balleron, a head of mission at the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), told us the organization has time and again raised concerns about the risks people face while attempting to reach Greek islands. In testimonies, Balleron explained, people have described violence, threats, degrading treatment, and pushbacks, or extrajudicial expulsions. Many have told MSF they were intercepted and returned to sea. At the same time, Balleron said limited humanitarian assistance on the country’s maritime borders has created “an environment where people … are exposed to greater risks at precisely the moment when they are most vulnerable.”
Lesbos, once one of the Greek islands nominated for the Nobel peace prize for its efforts to help those arriving on its shores, no longer has any humanitarian search and rescue. Those operations ended, according to rights observers, due to a climate of fear.
Meanwhile, the personal toll on the defendants was clear. Because the case had lasted more than seven years, Mardini told the judges at the January hearing, “Basically, I have lost my life in it.”
The proceedings against Mardini, Binder, and the others are just one of a growing list of what human rights organizations have dubbed “criminalization cases,” many of which receive little or no media coverage. As of September 2025, Greece had more than 2,400 people in custody or remanded in detention on smuggling charges, according to a joint report by Legal Centre Lesvos and the Human Rights Legal Project. That report estimates that more than 28% of those detained in Greece for smuggling charges were still awaiting their first trial. That figure makes them the second-largest category of detainees in the country. These detainees include people from Afghanistan, Somalia, and Sudan, among other countries.
Some 500 kilometers (310 miles) from Lesbos, nearly 20,000 people who crossed the Mediterranean Sea arrived on Greece’s Crete island last year. Weekly hearing lists at courthouses in Heraklion and Chania speak to the extent of the legal crackdown. There, many young men from Sudan, where a civil war has displaced 13 million people since 2023, have been arrested and now face trial on smuggling-related charges. Most are under the age of 25. Many of the lawyers representing these young men point out that they did not profit from their journeys and were often forced to take the wheel of the boat by smugglers who continue to line their pockets in Libya.
The nonprofit CPT (Community Peacemaker Teams), which has monitored some of these trials, says in around half of the cases, the proceedings take less than 30 minutes, though the outcome can spell life imprisonment for those in the docks. Inkstick attended one such trial in September 2025. More than 50 defendants were brought into the courtroom handcuffed together. Some were as young as 16. As the day came to an end, most of the cases were postponed, an occurrence that has become familiar to many of the defendants. The young men were forced to remain in pre-trial detention and taken back to Athens to await a future trial date.
Spyros Pantazis, a criminal defense lawyer who has represented several displaced people facing trial in Crete, explained that many cases have been built in a short period of time solely on the basis of the coast guard’s statements, without allowing the defense to properly question witnesses in court. Pantazis said such practices “raise serious questions” about whether the young men could receive a fair trial in accordance with European laws. “It is crucial to remember who these men are,” he said. “They are refugees from Sudan, forced to flee their homeland because of civil war and violence. They did not come here by choice, but by necessity — seeking safety, protection, and the basic human right to live without fear. Instead, they found themselves facing criminal charges, a situation that reflects a broader and troubling reality.”
On Lesbos, the two dozen defendants were finally acquitted when the prosecution’s case collapsed. Though it had taken years, Mardini, Binder, and the others were set free with a not guilty verdict. They left the courthouse amid an overwhelming sense of jubilation, and rights groups celebrated their belated acquittal.
At the same time, the scene on Crete that day was more sobering. A young asylum seeker from Sudan called Ramzi* received a 10-year prison sentence, accused of smuggling despite his wife’s testimony that he had only assisted the driver when the boat came into distress.
CPT’s Spyros Galinos said public attention matters in many of these cases. “When you enter a courtroom, it’s like a football field,” he explained. “Winning depends on the players, of course, but it also depends on those around you.”
Meanwhile, Greek authorities continue to ratchet up the pressure on people they accuse of smuggling. In late February, a dinghy from Turkey and a coast guard vessel collided near Chios, another island in the Aegean. Fifteen people died, and 24 were injured. In response, Greek migration minister Thanos Plevris responded by saying the “tragic incident” was the blame of smugglers alone. “The criminals are the traffickers,” he said. One man, a Moroccan national, has been arrested on suspicion of smuggling.
Investigative reporters and lawyers, though, have cast doubt on the official narrative surrounding that incident. The Greek investigative outlet Solomon cited serious inconsistencies between survivor testimonies and the coast guard’s version. According to that outlet, evidence suggests the patrol vessel might have struck the migrant boat without warning. The report similarly highlighted missing tracking data, non-functioning onboard cameras, and procedural irregularities.
On Feb. 12, Greek authorities issued a European-wide arrest warrant for the Norwegian human rights activist Tommy Olsen, who documents the arrivals of people on Greek islands. In 2018, Olsen founded Aegean Boat Monitor to document the increasingly fraught situation for people attempting to cross the eastern Aegean. The organization has become widely known for providing real-time information about boat crossings and alleged pushbacks, and often draws attention to the grim treatment many asylum seekers endure while trying to reach Greek shores.
For his part, Seán Binder still sees serious cause for concern. Though the acquittal in his own case should set a precedent, he fears authorities could simply continue to open years-long investigations into solidarity activists and humanitarians. “In summary, I don’t see any improvement in the situation,” he explained. “Along our external border, I see a sad — and it seems inevitable — construction of a more deadly border because we seem incapable of upholding the very rule of law that we claim to be champions of in the world.”
On the sunny morning of March 5, a young man from Afghanistan sat with his daughter on the same courthouse steps where Mardini and Binder had celebrated their acquittal two months earlier. He was one of the last smuggling cases that day. Nearly a year earlier, he had been on a boat that capsized near Lesbos’s northern shore. Survivors said a Hellenic Coast Guard vessel had caused the shipwreck. Among the seven people believed to have died in the incident was a young child.
At the end of the day, the man would walk free. Acquittal or not, though, he had already lost more than many. His wife was among the seven dead, and the child who went missing off the coast was their youngest.
*Indicates that the surname is withheld for privacy and safety concerns.