Journalist Ingeborg Beugel acquitted by Greek judge of helping Afghan refugee

Dutch journalist Ingeborg Beugel (65) was acquitted on Monday by the Greek court on appeal of offering shelter to an undocumented migrant. Beugel, who works as a correspondent in Greece, has this in mind The Green Amsterdammer and BNNVARA, confirmed by telephone after reporting from Villamedia.

The court in the Greek port city of Piraeus imposed a suspended prison sentence of eight months on Beugel in December last year: she had taken in a 21-year-old Afghan refugee named Fridoon in 2018. She had met him in a refugee camp outside Athens.

Beugel was financially assisted by the journalists’ union NVJ and international press organizations

An indictment followed in 2021, based on a 1991 law that has rarely been used, Beugel says on the phone. That law was introduced at a time when many Albanians came to Greece without papers, with the intention of restricting this. But this is only punishable if the shelter provided has been demonstrably hidden from the authorities and Beugel never did that, according to her defense. On appeal, the court “could not ignore that,” says Breugel. Fridoon has been living in the Netherlands for some time, with his mother and sister.

Beugel was present in the courtroom on Monday with her lawyer, as were two representatives of the Dutch embassy. “They were not allowed to say or do anything, but the fact that they are there is already very nice,” says Beugel. She has been financially assisted in recent years by the journalists’ union NVJ and international press organizations.

Strategy

The ruling is “an enormous liberation,” says Beugel. “It slowly dawns on me how much tension and pressure this situation has created.” According to the journalist, it is a strategy of the Greek authorities to prosecute journalists and activists with the aim of financially draining and silencing them.

International organizations for press freedom and human rights, such as Free Press Unlimited and Human Rights Watch, endorse this report from 2024. Like human rights defenders, journalists face “abuse of legal actions and coordinated online smear campaigns, often initiated or amplified by pro-state actors,” the report says.

I haven’t been able to write much in the last year, I couldn’t bring myself to do it

The charges against Beugel also fit in with another Greek trend: criminalizing people who provide assistance to migrants. Greece is prosecuting dozens of people for this, including the Dutch businessman Pieter Wittenberg and the swimmer Sarah Mardini, who herself fled from Syria and swam to meet drowning people from the island of Lesbos.

A case is also underway against Tommy Olsen, a Norwegian daycare worker who runs the NGO Aegean Boat Report in his spare time, on suspicion of human trafficking, hiding refugees and running a criminal organization.

Beugel: “It is very annoying to say, but this strategy [van de Griekse autoriteiten] works. Over the last year I have been able to write very little, I couldn’t do it, I was paralyzed.”

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