Refugee Rescue Group Faces Greek Prosecution, Says It Is Defending the Rule of Law

To the Greek authorities, he is a dangerous Norwegian mastermind behind an international criminal organization structured to carry out repeated offenses, which he secretly ran from his home in Tromso, north of the Arctic Circle. To the thousands of asylum seekers in distress on the Aegean Sea, he is a hero who may have saved their lives by publicly reporting their positions to search and rescue forces.

On Tuesday, a Greek court opened the trial of Tommy Olsen to determine who is right. He is the founder of Aegean Boat Report, an independent monitor of distressed boats in Aegean waters. When he receives information, he contacts Greek or Turkish asylum and coastguard services, depending on which side of the sea the refugees are on.

Prosecutors on the eastern Aegean island of Kos accuse Olsen of conspiring to smuggle refugees into Greece and conceal them from the authorities. Olsen will not be present at the Kos court because Norwegian authorities consider the evidence against him too thin to warrant extradition.

"They looked at what the Greek authorities describe me as having done, and they said: 'There is nothing illegal here. This is essentially protected activity,'" Olsen told Al Jazeera. "When I inform the Greek authorities about asylum seekers within their territory, on land, and provide their locations, their names, everything, that should be a good thing... But the Greek authorities see this as aiding and abetting."

Judicial harassment

The case matters far beyond the fate of Olsen, 54, who could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Human rights groups see it as Greece's latest effort to silence independent monitors of human rights violations, a practice the country has been found to engage in by the European Court of Human Rights.

"The ECHR has asked us to confirm certain testimonies in cases before the court, and those rulings have convicted Greece of pushbacks," said Maria Gavouneli, head of Greece's National Commission for Human Rights, the country's highest independent human rights body.

Pushbacks are the illegal turning back of people who may seek asylum. Under the 1951 Geneva Convention, signatories including Greece are obliged to provide an asylum hearing to anyone who requests one.

Aegean Boat Report is among a group of organizations that have provided verified evidence for cases at the ECHR. "We ask NGOs on the ground... to provide information about pushbacks. This is not rumor. This is signed testimony that can stand up in court," Gavouneli said.

Evidence provided by Aegean Boat Report has also helped shed light on at least two dozen cases of improper practices by the Greek Coastguard. Last month, the Council of Europe, the continent's main human rights body, said the retraining of Greek law enforcement personnel and other measures "remain insufficient to comprehensively address the 'systematic pushback practices' identified by the ECHR, while various sources continue to raise serious concerns about the issue."

Greece could face suspension of European Union funding if it fails to provide "genuine and effective access to international protection procedures." According to Olsen's lawyer, that is why the work of Aegean Boat Report is unwanted by the Greek authorities.

"The whole logic here is judicial harassment. They harass organizations and humanitarian workers to drive them away from the border, so that there can be no record of any irregular or illegal coastguard practices," Zacharias Kesses, managing partner of Athens Legal Firm, told Al Jazeera.

Smuggling or humanitarian support?

Greek authorities have long tried to show that some aid groups help smuggle people into Greece. Over the past eight years, prosecutors have shut down two organizations by arresting members and charging them with people smuggling and espionage.

But in January, all 30 members of Emergency Response Centre International, a Greek search and rescue group, were acquitted on charges similar to Olsen's. Sarah Mardini, a Syrian Olympic swimmer, was among them. Smuggling charges against Mare Liberum, a German search and rescue group, were also dropped this year for lack of evidence. Yet both organizations have been shut down.

"They force you to stop what you are doing and spend money to clear your name. Sarah Mardini took eight years to be acquitted, with all the help she received," said Kesses, who represents all three groups.

Although there has never been a smuggling conviction, suspicion persists in the minds of Greek officials. Last February, the government passed a law cutting public funding for an entire aid group if even one member is accused of a serious crime.

Defending the bill before parliament, Migration Minister Thanos Plevris said aid groups receiving funding cannot justify the use of volunteers. "If you receive money, you cannot have volunteers. Your people are legally paid from government and European Union money. They are not volunteers," Plevris said.

'My family is the collateral damage'

Although Greece controls none of Olsen's funding, it has cut it off. Fearing reputational damage, his donors have ended their support for Aegean Boat Report.

"The bill for a year of lawyers is probably 10 times the annual budget of Aegean Boat Report," he said. Two weeks ago, he sold his car. "I am sitting with a bill of 19,000 euros ($21,000), unable to pay."

Then there is the personal cost. Olsen, a former kindergarten teacher who left his job to become a full-time aid coordinator on the island of Lesvos during the 2015-16 refugee crisis, has not taken a vacation with his family for years because he spends all his time on refugees. Four of his five children have grown up and left home during that period.

"I feel very guilty for having put them through this, because I did this with my eyes open," he said. "I will be responsible for this, but I also have to be responsible... for the collateral damage around me. And my family is that collateral damage."

Kesses believes the case will be dismissed or end in acquittal, as previous ones did. Unlike them, it may not succeed in silencing Olsen. Aegean Boat Report still witnesses the suffering of asylum seekers at sea.

"The attacks from the Greek authorities give me the feeling that I am doing the right thing," he said. "I am hammering in a nail that hurts... The more they act, the more they try to arrest me, the more I understand that I am hammering in the right nail."

In 1923, when refugees from Turkey, ethnic Greeks, fled the burning of Smyrna, another Norwegian, Fridtjof Nansen, designed the world's first population exchange between two countries, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

While not comparing himself to Nansen, Olsen also sees his life as devoted to a larger purpose. "I am defending the rule of law," he said, "and defending human rights. This is not about a small group of people arriving on the Greek islands. It is about all of us. It is what we pass on to our children."