Bodrum
A Greek court sentenced two Russian sailors who were detained in the fall of 2019 on charges of organizing illegal migration. This is reported by “Interfax” with reference to the vice-president of the Russian division of the International Committee for the Protection of Human Rights Ivan Melnikov.
Alexander Illarionov and Andrey Zhuravlev were sentenced to 395 years in prison.
At the end of January, two Russians, Anton Karramov and Platon Davydov, were sentenced the same way. Their families are raising money for lawyers to free the sailors. It is noted that, in the event of a revision of the sentence, the convicts will spend no more than 20 years in prison. At the moment, another 10 crew members are awaiting a court decision.
In 2015, EU foreign ministers agreed to create a naval mission to combat the transport of illegal migrants to Europe. The European Union hoped that the mission participants would detain smugglers and destroy their ships off the coast of Libya, which would help solve the problem of the increased flow of migrants from North Africa.
