(Athens, October 3, 2026) – The ongoing prosecution of two prominent human rights defenders in Greece is a politically-motivated attempt to silence their efforts to expose abuses against migrants, Human Rights Watch said today. The trial of the two activists, Panayote Dimitras and Tommy Olsen, is set to begin on the Greek island of Rhodes on October 6, 2026.
“The upcoming trial of Panayote Dimitras and Tommy Olsen is a blatant attempt to criminalize and silence their legitimate human rights work,” said Eva Cossé, senior Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Prosecutors should drop this politically motivated case against Dimitras and Olsen once and for all.”
Dimitras, founder and president of the Greek nongovernmental group Greek Helsinki Monitor, and Olsen, a Norwegian national and founder of the nongovernmental group Aegean Boat Report, are being prosecuted alongside two Cameroonian asylum seekers on charges of “forming or joining for profit and by profession a criminal organization with the purpose of facilitating the entry and stay of third country nationals into Greek territory.” If convicted, they face up to 20 years in prison.
The charges brought against the activists in early 2023 stem from their peaceful human rights and humanitarian work, Human Rights Watch said. The indictment seeks to criminalize the defendants’ practice of notifying Greek authorities and international bodies of the whereabouts of newly arrived asylum seekers and migrants on the Greek islands, to help ensure that they have access to the country’s asylum procedure and not be pushed back to Türkiye.
Dimitras and Olsen have for years documented and exposed human rights violations against asylum seekers and migrants, including violent pushbacks by Greek authorities, that have been characterized as “systematic” by the European Court of Human Rights.
On May 15, a Norwegian appeals court rejected Greek authorities’ request to extradite Olsen, who lives in Norway, to Greece through a European Arrest Warrant. The Norwegian court concluded that the acts described by Greek authorities do not constitute criminal offenses under Norwegian law, noting that assisting someone in initiating an asylum procedure is a lawful act protected by international treaties. The court also found that extraditing Olsen to Greece would present a real risk of violating his right to freedom of expression.
Because Greek prosecutors have maintained arrest warrants, including the European Arrest Warrant, against Olsen, Olsen faces arrest and detention if he travels to Greece to defend himself. Dimitras who lives in Greece, is not in detention but is subject to a travel ban preventing him from leaving the country. The court summons specifies that, under Greek law, defendants will be tried in their absence if they do not appear or are not represented by a lawyer.
Proceeding on that basis would amount to an in absentia prosecution under international law. Under international law, including the European Convention on Human Rights, to which Greece is a party, anyone convicted in absentia, who later returns to the country where the conviction was issued, should have the opportunity to a fresh determination of the merits of their case by a court there.
The prosecution of Dimitras and Olsen is part of a wider, well-documented pattern of Greek authorities misusing criminal and administrative law to harass and intimidate human rights activists and civil society organizations defending the rights of asylum seekers and migrants. In January, a Greek court on the island of Lesbos acquitted 24 humanitarian workers of similar charges, after prosecutors subjected them to a devastating seven-year legal ordeal.
Despite this high-profile acquittal, Greek authorities have failed to change course, Human Rights Watch said. In February, the Greek government passed a migration law that makes membership in a nongovernmental organization an aggravating circumstance in migration-related criminal offenses, in some cases elevating them to felonies, with draconian penalties.
In 2023, the then-United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, stated in a report to the UN Human Rights Council that “human rights lawyers, humanitarian workers, volunteers and journalists [working on migration in Greece] have been subjected to smear campaigns, a changing regulatory environment, threats and attacks, and the misuse of criminal law against them, to a shocking degree.” Lawlor has also said that the criminal investigation against Dimitras and Olsen “strongly appears” to be arbitrary.
“The Norwegian court firmly recognized that helping people present themselves to seek asylum is not a crime,” Cossé said. “Greek authorities should take a cue from the court and end this farce by dropping the case and halting the weaponization of criminal law against human rights defenders.”
