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Sarah Mardini, true heroine of Netflix’s Swimmers, faces 20-year prison sentence in Greece
SCREENS – Chaos and anger reigned this Tuesday, January 10, at the trial on the Greek island of Lesbos of 24 aid workers accused of “espionage”, including Syrian refugee woman Sarah Mardini. Amnesty International estimates that the accused face “up to 25 years in prison” for all charges.
The young woman, who was not present on the day of the hearing, was arrested in August 2018 while working as a volunteer for the NGO ERCI on this Greek island where, in 2015 and under dramatic conditions, hundreds of thousands of refugees, especially Syrians, fled 2016
Like an echo of the story of Sarah Mardini and her sister, Olympic swimmer Yusra, who
has aroused so much interest that they can be seen in the film “Les Nageuses” broadcast on the Netflix platform. The feature film tells the story of Yusra and her sister Sarah over the last ten years, who left their parents and little sister in Syria to seek refuge in Germany. There, Yusra resumed swimming training until she qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympics, then five years later for those in Tokyo as part of the Olympic refugee team.
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Sarah Mardini, whose role is played by the Franco-Lebanese Manal Issa, spent three months in prison in Greece before being able to return to Berlin, where she has lived as a refugee since 2015. She did not have to open the process because of an entry ban for Greece.
In an interview with the German Tagesspiegel at the end of 2021, the young woman confided in her deep discomfort due to her legal problems.
“I want to get my life (before) back. For the past three years I have had no life (…) I exist through my body. But nothing else at the moment,” says the Syrian, who dropped out of her studies at a Berlin university and says she suffers from mental health problems.
Chaotic audience
This trial, described in a report by the European Parliament as “the biggest case of criminalization of solidarity in Europe”, was adjourned to Friday after an initial interruption in the morning due to the absence of one of the accused and his lawyer.
The court’s president clarified on Tuesday that only “espionage” charges against these humanitarian workers would be considered, while charges of money laundering, migrant smuggling and fraud would be considered later when the order was finalized.
This chaotic hearing has caused great dissatisfaction among the accused and human rights organizations since the trial was initiated by the Greek courts more than four years ago.
Lawyers for the defendants on Tuesday requested that the court drop the charges in this first part over procedural flaws such as a lack of translations of court documents or failure to provide certain defendants with documents to appear in court.
“The lawyers (for the defence) have provided irrefutable arguments showing why the course of this trial is unacceptable,” said Irish-German Sean Binder, one of the main defendants alleging the application of the “rule of law”.
“All charges against us, be it espionage or money laundering, are not valid. This trial has a political aim,” added another defendant, Dutchman Pieter Wittenberg.
For Human Rights Watch (HWR), the prosecution was launched on the basis of police reports that contained factual errors, “including allegations that some of the defendants participated in data rescue operations when they were not even in Greece.”
Faced with a surge in court cases against them, NGOs rescuing migrants at sea have halted almost all of their activities in Greece, a country accused of illegally pushing migrants back at its sea and land borders towards Turkey.
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