Greece shifts 450 migrants to facility near Athens

ATHENS: Greece is transferring 450 migrants recently detained for trying to reach the island of Lesbos illegally to a facility near Athens, authorities said on Sunday.

A ship with the migrants landed at a port near Athens and the migrants will be transferred to a facility just north of the capital pending deportation, an official at the Ministry of Migration policy said on condition of anonymity.

The transfer to the facility was still underway Sunday morning.

All the migrants have been detained since March 1, just days after Turkey said it was opening its borders to the millions of migrants on its soil.

In response, Greece has toughened its stance, suspending all asylum applications for a month and jailing migrants, and refugees, who tried to cross the land border from Turkey.

Although the migrants had been taken to the ship several days ago, the whole operation had been shrouded in secrecy, with officials refusing to comment on the ship’s destination even after it left Lesbos early Saturday afternoon.

A group of European Union (EU) countries agreed to take in at least 1,600 migrant children in Greece travelling without their parents, with the first unaccompanied minors likely to find homes in Luxembourg as soon as next week, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said on Friday.

There are currently over 42,000 migrants living in overcrowded camps in the Greek islands, including about 5,500 unaccompanied minors. According to the police agency Europol around 10 per cent of them are younger than 14.

Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Portugal have offered to take them in, and Johansson said that at least two other countries expressed an interest in getting involved during a meeting on Friday of EU interior ministers. She did not name them.

Earlier this week, Johansson said that migrant children traveling alone “face violence, abuse and exploitation. Many of them just disappear from the asylum and reception centres and we don’t know where they are. I am afraid that many of them fall into the hands of criminals.”