Hate crime trial opens in Greece

Hate crime trial opens in Greece

Greece: Rare Hate Crime Trial Opens

(Athens) – The trial of three people for the September 2011 assault on an Afghan asylum seeker in Athens is a sobering reminder of increasing racist violence in Greece, Human Rights Watch said today. The trial, scheduled to begin on December 12, is the first of its kind since 1999 even though racist violence in Athens has increased over the last two or three years, reaching alarming proportions in 2011.

In the current trial, two men and one woman are accused of brutally beating and stabbing Ali Rahimi, a 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, in Athens on September 16. Rahimi and two other Afghans say the accused were part of a larger group of about 15 people who surrounded them in the Aghios Panteleimonas neighborhood in the city center.

“The prosecution of this vicious attack sends an important message, but it is the tip of the iceberg,” said Judith Sunderland, senior Western Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch.  “If the authorities responded properly to racist violence, this trial would be one of many instead of a rarity.”

ThePakistani Community of Greece documented attacks on 60 Pakistani men in the first three months of 2011. In April, a large group of people attacked the Somali community center, injuring 10 Somalis and destroying the center.

After foreigners were accused of killing a Greek man in May, far-right extremists rampaged through immigrant neighborhoods in the center of Athens, leaving at least 25 people hospitalized with stab wounds or severe beatings. A man from Bangladesh was found dead, but it remained unclear whether he had been the victim of a racist attack. Though the violence continued for a number of days, no arrests were made, and the Athens prosecutor’s office told Human Rights Watch that no suspects had yet been identified.

Migrants and asylum seekers interviewed by Human Rights Watch speak of virtual no-go areas in Athens after dark because of fear of attacks by vigilante groups. Yunus Mohammadi, the president of an association of Afghans in Greece, said he has begun showing newer arrivals a map of Athens with a red line around areas they should avoid.

“This is exactly what I used to do in Afghanistan with the Red Cross about places people shouldn’t go because of fighting,” he told Human Rights Watch. “And here I am doing the same thing in a European country.”

Rahimi, the victim of the September 16 attack, was hit on the head with a bottle and stabbed in the chest and back, suffering a puncture to the lung dangerously close to his heart. He was rushed to the hospital. The other two Afghan men managed to escape, and one later identified two of the alleged suspects to the police. Reza Mohamed, one of the two, told Human Rights Watch that he was then detained by the police after the alleged attackers made false accusations against him. Mohamed was put in the same police station cell with the three alleged attackers, who he said mocked him and took pictures of him with their cell phones.

  Hate crime trial opens in Greece