Greek police faced accusations of “inhumane” treatment of nine Egyptian men after placing them in custody, according to the Guardian.
Police announced on Thursday they were placing the men in custody because it appeared they might flee the country, two days after a tribunal in the southern city of Kalamata dropped charges against them for lack of jurisdiction because the disaster occurred in international waters.
Following the ruling, the men, who spent 11 months in pre-trial detention and have pending asylum claims, were transferred to a police station where they remain in custody. According to the decision, they will remain in detention until their asylum applications are processed.
Up to 700 people from Pakistan, Syria and Egypt boarded a fishing trawler in Libya that was bound for Italy before it sank in south-west Greece last June. 104 survivors were rescued and 82 bodies were recovered. It was one of the deadliest shipwrecks to occur in the Mediterranean.
Natasha Dailiani, one of the lawyers for the men, told Reuters it was “tragic and unacceptable,” adding that the men should have been freed and that they planned to appeal against the detention order.
According to Dailiani, “It is inhumane to hold those people in detention after a court dismissed the charges against them and since they have already spent 11 months in prison in vain.”
