A Somali asylum seeker has been sentenced to 146 years in prison for human smuggling by a Greek court, according to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles. Other migrants defended the man in court, saying that he started steering their boat to save lives after a capsizing.
The Council of Europe has expressed its wish that Greece investigate further the allegations of pushbacks and ill-treatment of migrants in the Aegean in an open letter. The Greek government in the meantime accuses some NGOs of working with smugglers in the area.
A new report has placed a spotlight on the migrant smuggling business and other illicit activities running through the Western Balkans, including drugs and money laundering. The report estimates that the migrant smuggling business alone could be worth up to €50 million per year in the region.
More than 30 migrants in the Mavrovouni camp on the Greek island of Lesbos have tested positive for COVID-19, Greek authorities say. Around 100 people have been put in quarantine.
In an article published on Wednesday, the British newspaper revealed that at least 40,000 people seeking asylum in the European Union have been pushed back illegally. These operations have led to the deaths of more than 2,000 people.
A Balkans-based network of human rights groups has released a report on pushbacks against migrants in Greece and Croatia. It claims that systematic violence by Croatian and Greek authorities often amounts to "torture or inhuman and degrading treatment."
The Greek coast guard says it has picked up nearly 170 migrants near the Peloponnese peninsula. People smugglers operating between Turkey and Greece often put migrants on unseaworthy boats.
For years, hundreds of people with refugee protection in the EU who saw no future for themselves in their receiving member state found a second chance in Iceland. This is now changing.
While on the Greek island of Lesbos the Kara Tepe camp is closing, 6,000 people in the Moria 2 site are living in dire conditions, according to a new report issued by Oxfam and the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR). The groups call on authorities to revise the "de-facto detention system" for migrants.
EU border and coast guard agency Frontex says it is increasingly using chartered airplanes for aerial surveillance. That's according to a letter by Frontex to the European Commission. An EU lawmaker criticized the lack of rescue capacities.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has condemned the Greek government's decision to close the Kara Tepe 1 refugee camp on the island of Lesbos. The camp is considered "one of the few places that guaranteed security and dignity to nearly 400 vulnerable men, women and children."
More than 18,000 unaccompanied migrant minors have gone missing in Europe in the past three years, an investigation has found. Adriana Homolova from the journalists' collective Lost in Europe says that number is far too high.