Four migrants have been cleared on appeal of setting fire to the overcrowded Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos during the Covid pandemic.
The juvenile court of Mytilene found the defendants not guilty, ruling that their involvement in the blaze in September 2020 had not been proven. They had previously been sentenced to ten years prison.
Much of Moria, Greece’s largest and heavily overcrowded refugee camp, was destroyed in the blaze and around 13,000 people were left without shelter.
The fires broke out as tensions soared over restrictions imposed to curb the spread of Covid-19.
In the aftermath of the fires, six Afghan migrants were arrested. Two were immediately identified as minors and tried as such. The remaining four were initially classified as adults and sentenced to 10 years in prison each by a court in Chios.
Following an appeal, however, the court accepted that it had not been proven that they had reached the age of 18 at the time of the fire, and the case was transferred to a juvenile court.
On Saturday night, that court acquitted all four.
The lawyer for three of the defendants, Zacharias Kesses, said the case had been based solely on the word of a single witness and lacked supporting evidence.
“My young clients were held for almost three-and-a-half years in prisons unsuitable for minors, without sufficient evidence and without due process,” he said. “This case is a typical example of how criminal justice can fail when fear, stereotypes and political expediency prevail.”
The two other defendants – who were recognised as minors from the outset – were previously sentenced to four years in prison, reduced from an initial five. They have since been released.
The Moria camp, which had been designed to hold up to 3,000 people, had become dangerously overcrowded by the time of the fire, with as many as 20,000 people living in and around the facility. Many were housed in makeshift shelters and tents in nearby olive groves.
The blaze forced thousands of people – including families with children – to flee into surrounding farmland, sparking a humanitarian emergency on the island.
