Supporters of the accused 58-year-old Iranian Homayoun Sabetara in the courthouse in Thessaloniki.
Photo: Elisabeth Heinze
It’s a questionable law: Greek Law 4251/2014, Art. 30, identifies those caught behind the wheel of a boat or other vehicle as “pulling the wire profiteers of an escape.” In such cases, only the driver is arrested. The law is in line with the European guidelines laid down in the Empact program (European multidisciplinary platform against criminal threats). In Greece, the penalty for violations of this law was last increased in 2019; For each person transported, the driver faces a fine of up to 30,000 euros and a prison sentence of up to 15 years, but in practice never more than 20 years in prison.
Homayoun Sabetara, a 58-year-old Iranian with cancer, was sentenced to 18 years in prison on September 26 under the law. In the beginning there was his journey with a one-way ticket from Tehran to Istanbul, which was to take him via Greece to his daughters living in Berlin. He was arrested in Thessaloniki just over a year ago – as the driver of a car with seven occupants (three in the trunk). The accusation: people smuggling, for promoting illegal entry from third countries into the European Union. Sabetara was arrested without resistance.
The Iranian’s fate was that the smuggler left the group during the escape. He therefore drove the getaway car on the last leg of the escape route, after being pressured into driving the car in exchange for a deduction from the “travel expenses” or risking the end of the escape. An “offer” that Sabetara “accepts out of fear,” as his defense attorney Haris Ladis explained in court. The car is owned by a Greek who claims not even to know of the vehicle’s existence and is acquitted. Sabetara sees himself as a refugee and in no way as a people smuggler.
It is not a matter of course that the group made it as far as Thessaloniki at all: in the military restricted area on the Evros, there is not only a research ban for journalists, but people have already died here or been pushed back to Turkey in so-called pushbacks. A border surveillance system equipped with radar, thermal sensors, cameras and drones and funded by the EU was completed a year ago. It is intended to prevent »push forwards«, as the Greek government calls a supposedly targeted dispatch of migrants to Greece. According to agency reports, just last week the Greek border protection authorities prevented around 1,500 migrants from crossing the river.
Sabetara speaks quietly during the trial as he answers the judge’s questions. She interrogates him vigorously, so that the Persian interpreter has a hard time keeping up with the translation. “Didn’t he know what he would face if he entered Greece in this way?” The accused said no, silently. The judge also wants to know from her daughter Mahtob, how the flight went, who doesn’t humble herself in front of the judge’s desk. She only found out about her father’s arrest months later and, supported by the NGO Borderline Europe, traveled with her sister for the third time, as the trial had already been adjourned three times. It covers the travel expenses from the sale of Carola Rackete’s book »Act instead of hope«. Borderline Europe also provides legal support. That is why Sabetara is represented by a defense attorney like Haris Ladis, who in his closing speech portrays the accused as a respectable and also seriously ill person who, apart from “this wrong decision”, was not guilty of anything. He combines the current protests in Iran with praise for the daughters living in Germany, whose father supported them in making the right decisions in life. The argument caught on in court, so that at least the sentence was reduced. In an appeal until autumn 2023, his lawyer hopes for further mitigation.
Countless other refugees – as can be seen from the notice outside the courtroom, the majority of the processes here revolve around them – who are on trial for transporting third-country nationals await the start of their trials. It is not possible to say exactly how many there are and whether the number of refugees on trial for smuggling has increased under the current Greek government. Local NGOs cannot give the »nd« precise information. According to Pro Asyl and the Greek Ministry of Justice, this group constitutes the second largest group of detainees in Greece in 2019. What is certain is that under the centre-right government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, asylum applications are being processed faster – not necessarily to the advantage of the applicants, as the number of rejected applications is increasing. Sabetara has already received one.
