Left: Panayote Dimitras. Right: Tommy Olsen. © 2019 EIN Secretariat – Agnes Ciccarone
(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 characteriz
