ATHENS: Greece’s migration ministry on Saturday said it had submitted a new bill to parliament aimed at toughening penalties for migrant trafficking, including life sentences.
Greece was the main entry point into Europe for Syrian refugees at the height of Europe’s migration crisis in 2015.
There are several legal proceedings underway against aid workers and migrants accused of being people smugglers.
“Penalties for the illegal trafficking of migrants will be toughened at all levels,” the ministry said in a statement.
Sentences of up to life imprisonment are envisaged for smugglers, and migrants convicted of offenses may be directly expelled, it said.
Assistance provided to irregular migrants by migrants with regular status will also be criminalized, according to the proposals.
Migration Minister Thanos Plevris is a former member of a far-right party.
Penalties against NGO members prosecuted for migrant trafficking are also to be beefed up with prison sentences, the ministry said, adding that parliament will examine the bill next week.
In a joint statement, 56 NGOs, including the Greek branches of Doctors of the World and Doctors Without Borders, called for the immediate withdrawal of several articles that reclassify certain offenses as crimes, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and fines of tens of thousands of euros when a member of an organization is prosecuted.
They also decry the exorbitant power granted to the ministry, which can decide to remove an organization from the registry and end its work solely on the basis of charges brought against one of its members, without a conviction.
On January 15, 24 aid workers, including Sarah Mardini, a Syrian who, together with her Olympic swimmer sister inspired the 2022 film “The Swimmers,” were acquitted by a court on the island of Lesbos.
Charged with “forming a criminal organization” and “illegally facilitating the entry into Greece of foreign nationals from third countries,” they had faced up to 20 years in prison.
With this new law, the migration ministry aims to promote legal migration by easing hiring procedures for workers from third countries, creating a new visa for employees of high-tech companies, and issuing residence permits to students from third-world countries for the duration of their studies.
For asylum seekers and refugees, vocational training programs in sectors facing labor shortages, such as construction, agriculture, and tourism, are being introduced to support their entry into the job market.
Greece seeks to toughen punishment for migrant smuggling
https://arab.news/cjn38
Greece seeks to toughen punishment for migrant smuggling
- There are several legal proceedings underway against aid workers and migrants accused of being people smugglers
Military intervention in Iran ‘not the preferred option’: French minister
- The president’s son blamed foreign interference for the protests’ violent turn, but said “the security and law enforcement forces may have made mistakes that no one intends to defend and that must be addressed”
PARIS: Military intervention in Iran, where authorities launched a deadly crackdown on protesters that killed thousands, is not France’s preferred option, its armed forces minister said on Sunday.
“I think we must support the Iranian people in any way we can,” Alice Rufo said on the political broadcast “Le Grand Jury.”
But “a military intervention is not the preferred option” for France, she said, adding it was “up to the Iranian people to rid themselves of this regime.”
Rufo lamented how hard it was to “document the crimes the Iranian regime has carried out against its population” due to an internet shutdown.
“The fate of the Iranian people belongs to Iranians, and it is not for us to choose their leaders,” said Rufo.
The son of Iran’s president, who is also a government adviser, has called for internet connectivity to be restored, warning that the more than two-week blackout there would exacerbate anti-government sentiment.
Yousef Pezeshkian, whose father, Masoud, was elected president in 2024, said, “Keeping the internet shut will create dissatisfaction and widen the gap between the people and the government.”
“This means those who were not and are not dissatisfied will be added to the list of the dissatisfied,” he wrote in a Telegram post that was later picked up by the IRNA news agency.
Such a risk, he said, was greater than that of a return to protests if connectivity were restored.
The younger Pezeshkian, a media adviser to the presidency, said he did not know when internet access would be restored.
He pointed to concerns about the “release of videos and images related to last week’s ‘protests that turned violent’” as a reason the internet remained cut off, but criticized the logic.
Quoting a Persian proverb, he posted “‘He whose account is clean has nothing to fear from scrutiny.’”
The president’s son blamed foreign interference for the protests’ violent turn, but said “the security and law enforcement forces may have made mistakes that no one intends to defend and that must
be addressed.”
He went on to say that “the release of films is something we will have to face sooner or later. Shutting down the internet won’t solve anything; it will just postpone the issue.”
