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Four Afghan migrants had been formally charged with arson Wednesday for their alleged involvement in fires that destroyed most of a big refugee camp on Greece’s japanese island of Lesbos, authorities stated.
The males, who haven’t been named, had been led to a court docket on the island and later returned to police detention after being given three days to organize their testimony.
The fires swept by the overcrowded camp at Moria on two nights final week, prompting greater than 12,000 migrants and refugees to flee. Nobody was harm. Most of them stay with out shelter, camped on a roadside close to the gutted camp.
Two different migrants allegedly concerned in setting the fires are minors who’re being held by police on the Greek mainland however haven’t been formally charged. They had been amongst round 400 unaccompanied minors from Moria who had been flown to the mainland after the fires.
The Greek authorities maintains that the fires at Moria had been set intentionally by migrants protesting confinement after the location was locked down as a result of an outbreak of Covid-19.
Athens on Tuesday urged the European Union to collectively run new refugee camps on Greece’s japanese islands as a part of an overhaul of the EU’s migration insurance policies.
“The images of the Moria camp are a painful reminder of the need for Europe to come together,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated Wednesday throughout her state of the union deal with.
“Everybody has to step up here and take responsibility – and the commission will do just that,” von der Leyen instructed lawmakers at the European Parliament, including that the fee was engaged on a plan for a brand new camp on the island.
“But I want to be clear: if we step up, then I expect all (EU) member states to step up, too. Migration is a European challenge ,and all of Europe must do its part,” she stated.
Greek military personnel have been constructing a brand new camp on the island, utilizing tents for emergency housing for asylum-seekers left homeless by the fire. But many are reluctant to go to a brand new facility they concern might find yourself just like the squalid Moria camp.
The U.N. refugee company’s consultant in Greece, Philippe Leclerc, stated about 1,100 folks, largely these thought of weak, had been housed at the brand new website by Wednesday afternoon, however that as much as 8,000 might be accommodated. Leclerc inspired extra of the Moria camp’s former residents to maneuver there.
Greek officers have stated they might forcibly take away folks from the highway close to the burned-out camp the place they’ve been sleeping tough and take them to the camp if folks refuse to go.
Leclerc famous that relocation to different European nations would solely be for “a limited number of persons, in particular the unaccompanied children and some more vulnerable individuals.”
Several European nations have pledged to soak up among the unaccompanied minors who had been staying in Moria.
“We asked for the support of other European countries to continue assisting Greece, which is hosting…more than 100,000 asylum-seekers and refugees,” Leclerc stated.
He pressured violence was not an answer for migrants and refugees to get off the island.
“Despair is understandable, but it cannot justify the violence,” Leclerc stated. “Violence…and burning will not provide any solution. We need (a) peaceful, orderly way of getting people out of Lesbos gradually. And this is what we are supporting,.”
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