Kerry native Seán Binder is one of 24 migrant rescue volunteers charged with alleged offences on Greek island of Lesbos in 2018
Seán Binder is a trained rescue diver who moved to Lesbos, Greece in 2017. Photograph: PA WireAn Irish aid worker has said his trial in Greece on smuggling-related charges is “deeply damaging” to the European Union.
The defendants deny any wrongdoing, maintaining they were trying to help save lives at a time when Lesbos was overwhelmed by refugees and migrants arriving from nearby Turkey.Mr Binder, a trained rescue diver, was working with Emergency Response Centre International, a Greek non-governmental organisation at the time. Despite the NGO working closely with police and the coast guard, he was arrested and charged in August 2018 and placed in pretrial detention for almost four months.
Mr Binder told the Press Association he is eager for the trial to begin, but fears it will be drawn out further. “It is just a material fact that using WhatsApp doesn’t make you a spy. It is a fact that helping people at risk of drowning is not smuggling. It is a fact that just because you happen to operate at a charity, you are not a money launderer. The arguments, the facts pulled, the evidence brought forward by the prosecution and the police investigation is so weak,” he said.
Mr Binder said he was “arrested for doing really a small act of kindness” and “it was terrifying that the Greek state and the European Union” would seek to criminalise a 24-year-old for trying to help.
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