Begging ring
A 36-year-old Bulgarian national and a 42-year-old Greek were detained by police in Thessaloniki yesterday as suspected members of a ring believed to have been forcing disabled Bulgarian nationals to beg outside churches on their behalf.
(1.10.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Illegal immigrants
Border patrol police in Alexandroupoli, northern Greece, detained 26 illegal immigrants in separate incidents on Saturday after stopping two vehicles in which they were being transported. First, and after a brief chase, officers stopped a car carrying six immigrants. The driver was also arrested. Later, they pulled over a small truck on the Evros-Alexandroupoli national road and found inside 20 undocumented immigrants. The driver was taken into custody as well. However, two men in a car traveling ahead of the truck and acting as a lookout managed to evade arrest.
(28.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Diaspora: We want to vote
Stefanos Tamvakis, president of the World Council of Hellenes Abroad (SAE), has stepped up calls for the introduction of overseas voting in order to increase the Greek diaspora’s participation in Greece’s elections. For its part, the SAE - a voice for about 5 million Greek expatriates - is calling for a law on overseas balloting that would do away with having to be physically in Greece simply to vote. Also, the SAE wants to see Greeks from outside Greece sitting in parliament.
(28.9.2009) ATHENS NEWS ( by Kathy Tzilivakis )
Migrants move to Igoumenitsa
An operation in the summer to shut down an immigrants’ camp next to the port of Patra has led to more migrants congregating around the northeastern port of Igoumenitsa, police sources told Kathimerini, while also revealing that a team of more than 20 officers has been formed to deal with just this matter.
(25.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Are Greeks racist?
It’s a simple question but it does not have a simple answer. Twenty years ago, when Greece was a monolithic society, in which 97 percent of the population called itself both Greek and Orthodox, the question would have been met with a unanimous “No!” That was before a million foreigners poured into the country. The immigrants, whether from Albania or Somalia, were something very new and very different in Greek society.
(25.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
German migrant rap rebuffed
The government yesterday dismissed criticism by German authorities about Greece’s treatment of illegal immigrants, noting that Germany is not burdened with the same influx of illegal migrants as Greece and does not have the right to judge.
(24.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Migrant smuggling
Police in Nikaia, near Piraeus, yesterday were questioning a 23-year-old Afghan and eight Pakistanis believed to have been smuggling illegal immigrants into the country from Turkey. According to police, the ring members would collect the migrants from Evia and drive them to an apartment in Nikaia where they would beat them and force them to telephone their relatives and arrange payments for their release. A group of eight would-be migrants, from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, were also detained.
(22.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Frontex report implicates Turks
Photographs taken from a Latvian helicopter participating in Frontex patrols over the Aegean and published yesterday in Kathimerini, show Turkish coast guard officials failing to obstruct a smuggling vessel from leaving the Turkish coast, an apparent vindication of Greek claims that Turkish authorities are not cooperating in the fight to curb illegal immigration.
(21.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Trafficking arrests
Police in Thessaloniki yesterday detained two Nigerian nationals, a 29-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman, who are alleged to have been forcing a female compatriot, aged 21, to work as a prostitute for their profit. The pair, arrested in the city’s Toumba district, are alleged to have paid 5,500 euros to purchase the 21-year-old from her father last year.
(19.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Anti-trafficking drive
Alternate Interior Minister Christos Markoyiannakis yesterday stressed the importance of greater cooperation between countries in which human traffickers are known to be operating. “The isolated efforts of individual states are not enough; international cooperation is necessary,” Markoyiannakis told a meeting of experts in the field in Hania, Crete.
(18.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
One worker killed, second critical after stand collapses
A 51-year-old Georgian worker was killed and a 50-year-old Bulgarian seriously injured yesterday when a wooden stand they had been dismantling on the grounds of the Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF) collapsed on them. There were no details about the circumstances of the incident nor the condition of the Bulgarian worker who was transferred to Thessaloniki’s Ippocratio Hospital. Police detained the owner of the firm that employed the men for questioning.
(17.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Investigation launched after four migrants break out of cell
Four undocumented migrants, arrested on Friday for trying to enter Greece illegally, escaped from their holding cell near the headquarters of the coast guard on the eastern Aegean island of Chios yesterday. The three men and one woman sawed through the iron bars and wire mesh on their cell window. An internal investigation was launched into the escape.
(14.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
New EU plans for refugees
The European Commission has hammered out a scheme for the resettlement of refugees from outside the 27-member bloc that it says will reduce the incentive for desperate migrants trying to sneak into Greece and other EU member states on the frontline of illegal immigration.
(14.9.2009) ATHENS NEWS
Colombian ‘madam.’
Five people have been arrested in Xylokastro, near Corinth, as suspected members of a sex ring. According to police, an undercover police officer approached a Colombian woman alleged to have arranged a meeting for him with a young Greek woman. Both the women were arrested in a Xylokastro hotel room after the Colombian allegedly received payment in marked bills. Another three individuals were arrested after two men, a Greek and a Romanian, allegedly brought a Romanian prostitute to a hotel room for an appointment with another undercover police officer.
(10.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Racist attacks
The Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) yesterday issued a statement alleging that groups linked to the extreme right-wing Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) have been attacking immigrants in the Aghios Panteleimonas district of central Athens over the past week. According to SYRIZA, the groups have been patrolling the area at night and have attacked immigrants with sticks and iron bars.
(9.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Migrants rescued
A group of 17 illegal immigrants were recovering in hospital on Samos yesterday after being rescued from an inflatable dinghy that had foundered a few kilometers off the island’s coast. The migrants, all men whose ethnic origin was unclear, were collected by a coast guard vessel. They told the officials that they had sought to reach the island from neighboring Turkey. On the small island of Agathonisi, coast guard officials detained a boatload of 25 would-be migrants who were transfered to the larger nearby island of Patmos.
(8.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Ombudsman seeks better conditions for children
The Children’s Ombudsman, Giorgos Moschos, yesterday expressed concern about the conditions in which dozens of unaccompanied minors and mothers with small infants are living in a migrant detention center on the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos. Moschos, who visited two facilities on the island earlier this week, said that conditions at the detention center in Pagani were “unacceptable” due to overcrowding and inadequate access to toilets and an open-air exercise area. However, the ombudsman praised the “decent efforts” being made at another facility on the island to which dozens of unaccompanied minors were transferred when the Pagani center became excessively overcrowded earlier this week.
(5.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Human traffickers
Police have arrested five people and are seeking four more, all believed to be members of a gang who had kept nine illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh in an underground garage in Menidi, northern Athens, for five months. The gang members are alleged to have systematically beaten and sexually assaulted the immigrants and threatened to kill them if their relatives did not pay amounts ranging from 2,000 to 4,000 euros. Those arrested were four Greeks – two men and two women and a 28-year-old Iraqi man.
(5.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Prostitution ring
Trikala police said yesterday that they had broken up a prostitution ring, following the arrest of a foreign woman and her male Greek accomplice who are alleged to have peddled the sexual services of women and young girls to customers in the broader region. Warrants have also been issued for the arrest of another three suspects for the alleged sexual abuse of a female minor.
(4.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Samos, the migrant magnet
By day, this lush island set in the Aegean Sea offers a sanctuary to tourists seeking clear blue seas and immaculate beaches. After nightfall, a grimmer reality takes hold. Bodies sometimes wash ashore at daybreak. Human traffickers ply the waters off the coast. Patrol boats set off in pursuit of dinghies crammed with desperate migrants. Greece’s islands welcome millions of visitors each year but they are also increasingly playing host to newcomers of a more unwelcome variety: undocumented laborers from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
(4.9.2009) Kathimerini English Edition ( by Derek Gatopoulos )
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