Daily Times

Police in Greece on Tuesday said they had arrested three members of a Greek NGO on suspicion of helping migrants illegally enter the country.

The members of Emergency Response Centre International (ERCI) were detained on the Greek island of Lesbos, where thousands of migrants are housed in squalid conditions in cramped camps. “The activities of an organised criminal network that systematically facilitated the illegal entry of foreigners were fully exposed,” a police statement said.

Members of the group were in contact with migrants on social media groups and “actively assisted” their illegal entry into Greece from 2015 onwards, according to the statement. To keep tabs on migrant flows, the accused also illegally monitored Greek coastguard and EU border agency Frontex radio traffic, authorities said. Any information gathered was not shared with Greek authorities, the police said. Overall, six Greeks and 24 foreign nationals were implicated in the case, they added. Among those arrested was Sarah Mardini, a 23-year-old Syrian refugee student and scholarship recipient of Bard College in Berlin.

Published in Daily Times, August 30^th 2018.