Greek court acquits migrants accused of lighting Moria fire on Lesbos

After spending 3.5 years behind bars for allegedly starting the 2020 fire that destroyed the severely overcrowded Moria migrant camp on the Greek Aegean Island of Lesbos, three Afghan asylum seekers were found not guilty last Friday (April 4) by a youth court in Lesbos’ capital Mytilene.

That’s according to media reports by Greek news outlet Kathimerini and British broadcaster BBC, which wrote that the court ruled that the migrants’ “involvement in the blaze in September 2020 had not been proven.”

This decision reversed earlier convictions that led to their imprisonment for more than three years after being accused of causing the fire that devastated the camp.

Six Afghans were initially arrested in the aftermath of the fire, the BBC reported. While two of them were tried as minors and sentenced to five years in prison each, the remaining four were initially found guilty in 2021 by a court on the island of Chios and each received 10-year sentences.

The two minors’ sentences were later reduced from five to four. According to the BBC, they have since been released.

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‘Lack of fairness’

The convictions of the other four migrants were solely based on a pre-trial statement from another Afghan, who did not give evidence in court. The defendants had consistently stated they were minors at the time of the fire and offered official documents as proof.

However, Kathimerini reported that officials initially used wrist X-rays to determine their ages. They had stated they were 15, 16, and 17 years old at the time.

Defense lawyers argued the court in the initial proceedings treated the case with a “lack of fairness”, violating the defendants’ rights to a fair trial. The credibility of the witness was also questioned due to potential conflicts between tribal groups.

In 2024, an appeals court not only determined that the original court lacked the authority to try the case, but also that it had not been proven that three of them had reached the age of 18 at the time of the fire. This resulted in a new trial under juvenile law, meaning they were eventually tried as minors.

“My young clients were held for almost three-and-a-half years in prisons unsuitable for minors, without sufficient evidence and without due process,” the BBC quoted the trio’s lawyer as saying. “This case is a typical example of how criminal justice can fail when fear, stereotypes and political expediency prevail.”

According to Kathimerini, the three Afghans are now expected to seek financial reparations for their wrongful imprisonment.

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Devastating fire

The fire in the dangerously overcrowded Moria camp, considered Europe’s biggest at the time, began on the night of September 8, 2020.

Most of the tents and shelters in the camp were completely destroyed in the blaze, leaving approximately 13,000 people homeless, although no one died in the fire. Families with small children, pregnant women, and people with disabilities had to sleep in the open for at least a week after the camp was destroyed by the fires. Some were even still housed in tents a year later.

Built for 3,000 people, the camp housed nearly four times its capacity in overcrowded, makeshift shelters and tents without proper sanitation, as hundreds of thousands of migrants arrived on the island in 2015 hoping to settle elsewhere in the EU.

According to the BBC, as many as 20,000 people were living in and around the facility at some points.

At the time, Greek authorities said they believed that camp settlers deliberately lit the fires as a reaction to quarantine measures imposed in the camp to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which stirred up tensions still further on the island.