The Irish-German surfer, rescue diver and barrister Sean Binder, who is one of a group of humanitarian workers acquitted after a trial on the Greek island of Lesbos has spoken of his “relief and anger” at the outcome. The case, reported on this week by the BBC Radio documentary, Assignment, involved Binder and 23 other volunteers.
Binder, who is German-born, grew up in Kerry. He was a surfer and search and rescue scuba diver who volunteered for civilian search and rescue of migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos in 2017.
Arrested with 23 others in 2018, he faced felony charges, including membership of a criminal organisation, people smuggling, and money-laundering, for helping save the lives of refugees in Lesbos.
Also among the defendants facing a possible 20 years in jail was the Syrian refugee and former competitive swimmer Sara Mardini, who returned to Lesbos to rescue other refugees and whose story was told in the Netflix drama The Swimmers.
The defendants who worked for the Emergency Response Centre International (ERCI) denied the charges and argued that the prosecution was an attempt by the Greek authorities to criminalise help to asylum seekers. "All defendants are acquitted of the charges" because their aim was "not to commit criminal acts but to provide humanitarian aid", presiding judge Vassilis Papathanassiou told the court last week.
The court had heard evidence during the trial from a senior police officer who said the use of WhatsApp by the volunteers to share information about the location and state of boats carrying migrants was not shared with the Greek authorities.
However, a Greek coast guard officer, Stavros Gagarellis, gave evidence that the volunteers had cooperated closely with his organisation.
Binder, who was held in pre-trial detention for three months in 2018 along with Mardini, told the BBC his reaction was one of “a relief and anger cocktail, equally balanced”. “I am obviously very relieved that I'm not going back to prison. But I'm also very angry that it's taken this long to get here," he said.
Now 31, Binder has trained as a lawyer but was unable to practise while awaiting the trial. He had saved money to ensure his mother could rent a flat if she wanted to stay in Lesbos while he was in prison.
Reporting on the case for the BBC, Tim Whewell noted that back in 2015, when as many as 800,000 migrants arrived on Lesbos after crossing the narrow strait from Turkey, local people were proud of their efforts to rescue and support refugees.
Attitudes towards migrants changed later, and NGOs stopped their rescue work - for fear that more aid workers might be prosecuted. Now, far fewer migrants attempt the crossing to Greece, he has noted.
Those who do sometimes die in shipwrecks, he notes. And there are allegations, denied by Greece, that its police are illegally pushing asylum seekers back - putting them back on boats and abandoning them at sea, he says.
Listen to Tim Whewell's report on The Documentary from BBC Assignment here https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/p0mvy21r
