Police in Greece said on Tuesday (28 August) they had arrested three members of a Greek NGO on suspicion of helping migrants illegally enter the country.

The members of Emergency Response Centre International (ERCI) were detained on the Greek island of Lesbos, where thousands of migrants are housed in squalid conditions in cramped camps.

“The activities of an organised criminal network that systematically facilitated the illegal entry of foreigners were fully exposed,” a police statement said.

Members of the group were in contact with migrants on social media groups and “actively assisted” their illegal entry into Greece from 2015 onwards, according to the statement.

Greek authorities have arrested two aid workers and are investigating a total of 30 from the same organization on the island of Lesvos on suspicion they smuggled migrants into Greece, spied and laundered money, police said on Tuesday.

Police said in a statement that the suspects, 24 foreign nationals and six Greeks, had been active on the island since at least late 2015 as part of a non-governmental organization, whose name the authorities would not disclose.

Lesvos, not far from Turkey in the northeast Aegean Sea, was the preferred entry point into the European Union in 2015 for nearly a million Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, and dozens of aid groups operated on the island at the time.

Over 19,000 refugees and migrants have crossed to Greece from Turkey so far this year, according to data from the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.

Police said the suspected crime ring allegedly “provided direct assistance to organized migrant trafficking rings.”

They said the group obtained “significant amounts of money,” including from donations, without disclosing the amount.

The 30 workers are being investigated on a case-by-case basis on suspicion of “establishing and joining a criminal organization, money laundering, espionage, violating state secrets, counterfeiting and offenses against the immigration code and electronic communication legislation,” police said.

They allegedly obtained confidential information on refugee flows from Turkey and illegally monitored the radio communications of the Greek coast guard and the EU’s border agency Frontex.

Oh well, at least we get a break from this nonsense thread for a month!

Predictably, the media for the hard-of-thinking is referring to this as a "hit-and-run". Had it been a carload of Muslims running down a group of C of E church-goers, whilst screaming anti-Christian sentiment, it would have automatically been "a terror attack".

They don't even try to hide their double standards any more.

US says worldwide terrorism deaths decreased 27% last year

"Fifty-nine percent of all attacks took place in five countries. Those are Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Pakistan and the Philippines,"
"70% of all deaths due to terrorist attacks took place" in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Syria.

Pakistan’s supreme court has struck down the death sentence for blasphemy handed down to Christian woman Asia Bibi, in a long-delayed, landmark decision that has seen the judiciary praised for its bravery in the face of threats of violence and protest from the country’s Islamist groups.