Four Afghan asylum seekers were on Saturday sentenced to 10 years in prison in Greece for their part in a fire that destroyed the Moria migrant camp last year, in a case that highlighted the chronic refugee problem on Europe’s borders.
The men, charged with arson with risk to human life over the fire on the island of Lesbos in September last year, were found guilty after a court rejected a request by lawyers for three of them to be tried by a juvenile court because they were younger than 18 at the time.
Before the blaze, Moria was considered Europe’s biggest migrant camp, a sprawling and overcrowded town of tents and improvised shelters notorious for its poor and often dangerous living conditions.
Photo: AFP
Described by human rights groups and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as unfit for humans, the camp had become a symbol of Europe’s stumbling response to the migration crisis on its southern borders, which left much of the burden to be carried by small islands such as Lesbos.
Greek authorities believe that the fire was deliberately lit by camp occupants after quarantine measures were imposed following the discovery of COVID-19 cases among people living on the site.
The blaze sent more than 12,000 people, mostly Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi refugees who had endured a dangerous sea crossing, fleeing for their lives, forcing most to sleep in the open for days without shelter, food and water, or sanitation.
No one was killed in the fire.
A new temporary camp was set up on the site of an old army firing range, but tenders have been launched for new closed centers on Lesbos and the nearby island of Chios that the government has said would provide safer accommodation, but which critics have said risk becoming like prisons.
The four men were among a group of six Afghans detained by police following the fire. The other two were sentenced in March to five years in prison.
Defense lawyers said that the men had been framed by a witness and that the court’s decision was “an inconceivable conviction without evidence.”
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