It is exactly 1 p.m. this Friday when, handcuffed and surrounded by three police officers, the Norwegian photographer Knut Bry crosses the entrance gate to the court in Mytilene, capital of the Greek island of Lesbos on the border with Turkey. Applause rings out, along with cries of support: “We are with you !” launches a woman. Knut Bry, a photographer who has won several international awards, was arrested for “espionage and treason”, explains his lawyer, Me Haris Petsikos, to Release. He pursues : “There is no evidence of the offense with which he is charged.”
As revealed by the Greek site TVXS, Knut Bry was taking pictures in the port of Mytilene on Wednesday when he was arrested. According to the Coastguard Service, his camera contained numerous shots of Coastguard and Navy boats. Their spokesperson even claimed that the man “was on the quay and watched the movements of the ships”. For his part, the defendant’s lawyer relativizes: “In their device, the police found a photo of a coastguard vessel leaving the port.” According to several sources, the photographer was preparing a new book on the island.
“A way of telling us to take care of ourselves if we come to the aid of migrants”
Before the court, Lena Altinoglou, one of the leaders of the Lesbos Solidarité association which runs the cooperative restaurant Nan run by the inhabitants of the island and asylum seekers and refugees, explains: “I’ve known Knut for years! He has been coming to the island for twenty-four years, he is very involved in the associative structures of aid to migrants. He is truly a generous, determined man…” For her, the photos are only a pretext for the arrest of this 75-year-old man known for his critical position towards Greece’s extremely harsh migration policy. Moreover, a few days before his arrest, he had posted on a social network the photo of a Hellenic Coast Guard patrol boat accompanied by this comment: “Repelling in Style”. For him, this method was a “shame for Europe”. “It’s one more signal, a way of telling us to take care of ourselves if we come to the aid of migrants”, believes Lena Altinoglou.
Knut Bry’s lawyer recalls for his part that other volunteers invested in supporting migrants have already been arrested for “espionage and treason”, such as swimmer Sarah Mardini and Seán Binder, two volunteers for a rescue NGO (Emergency Response Center International) while spotting and rescuing boats in distress. Pursued by Greek justice, they risk twenty-five years in prison. Lena Altinoglou continues: “Knut Bry was against pushbacks [les renvois illégaux de migrants en mer, ndlr] documented by NGOs and journalists and against the migration policy of Greece and he said it.”
Ironically, the man who denounced these practices was arrested the day the German magazine Der Spiegel published on its site, with supporting evidence, the information that the boss of Frontex (European border guard agency) Fabrice Leggeri would have covered the brutal returns to the sea, the sometimes fatal “pushbacks”, carried out by the coastguards Greeks. But for the moment, neither Fabrice Leggeri nor the Greek coast guard are in custody.