I’m facing 25 years in jail - just for saving lives
Back home in Cork after four months in a Greek prison, Sean Binder’s ‘crime’ was to help refugees fleeing terror and war... only to be accused of people trafficking in a case that has stunned human rights experts
LIKE many others who have recently returned home from abroad, Sean Binder has been busy. The Cork graduate travelled with his mother Fanny and stepfather to Kerry to visit extended family over Christmas and is still catching up with friends that he hasn’t seen in over a year.
‘It’s all very strange being home, especially when you’ve spent four months in jail,’ he admits.
It’s almost hard to believe that this articulate, thoughtful and sensitive 24-year-old has spent any time behind bars. But a bizarre chain of events saw Sean imprisoned in Greece’s toughest jail last year, facing trial and being released on €5,000 bail. While he’s currently taking it easy, more serious business lies over the horizon. For Sean will soon reconvene with his legal team and fight charges that could see him serve up to 25 years in a Greek jail.
The circumstances that led to his arrest began when Sean decided to volunteer as a search and rescue first responder on the Greek island of Lesbos with the non-profit refugee group Emergency Response Care International, which has now wound down its operations. His extensive volunteering and diving experience, not to mention degree in Economics and Political Science from the London School of Economics, made him a valuable member of the team.
He teamed up with fellow volunteer Sarah Mardini — sister of Olympic refugee swimmer Yusra Mardini — who famously rescued 18 refugees by swimming and pulling a waterlogged dinghy to the shores of Lesbos with her Olympian sister in 2015.
Then last August Sean and Sarah were arrested and jailed in a pre-trial detention accused of being involved in human trafficking by the Greek authorities.
Accusations of money laundering, espionage and being a member of a criminal organisation were also cited — charges that Sean, and almost everyone else, finds baffling. Copious evidence exists that proves the pair’s innocence, and Greece received fierce criticism from human rights groups following the arrests.
A number of organisations, among them Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as a handful of legal scholars, have pored over the evidence. ‘They all agree there’s nothing there,’ says Sean.
‘People will think, “well, you must have done something, because this doesn’t just happen”, but everyone, from legal experts familiar with Greek law and European context, non-affiliated legal firms, investigative journalists — all of them have said this is bull***t.’
The big question looms large: how can a person who is attempting to help refugees through a recognised non-profit group be viewed as a criminal, or end up in prison for any length of time?
‘I’m asking myself the same thing,’ Sean laughs gently.
‘What I’ve been trying to do now is go through everything and thank people, as I’ve an incredible amount of support.
‘It’s an international case, and the Germans have very much been involved, but the Irish in particular mobilised MEPS and got the ball rolling to make it a visible case. You just couldn’t stop the Irish.’
Certainly, no one can question Sean’s keen sense of social justice, something that has been fostered from a very early age.
His father, Van Khon, was a Vietnamese refugee who fled to Germany, where he and his mother Fanny met, and where Sean was eventually born. He moved to Ireland and has lived here since the age of five.
His grandmother, Fanny’s mother Eta Bode, who died earlier last year, was also an indefatigable tour de force.
‘In the 1970s she was fairly heavily involved in civil rights and women’s rights in particular, and was a very powerful feminist,’ Sean says with clear admiration.
‘We’re from a working-class background, but I was bred within a culture of really looking at things properly. I became aware of how difficult life could be for others.’
While Sean was an undergraduate in Trinity College, the volunteering bug bit. By the time he studied politics and migration in London, the migration crisis was unfolding at full pelt. He began to think seriously about how to affect change. It soon became his aspiration in life to do his bit, and to make the world a better place.
He baulks at any mention of words like ‘heroic’ and ‘noble’.
‘It’s gratifying, but there’s only so much you can do,’ he says. ‘We’re not heroes. If you can help you should help, and if you can’t, don’t. It’s not about being a hero.
‘I didn’t have a job tying me down, and I thought, well, I have the search and rescue skills.
‘Ironically, it was important to me
He baulks at the words ‘heroic’ or ‘noble’
to find an organisation with a good relationship with the authorities, and one that I shared values with.’ Job done on connecting with ERCI, Sean moved to the Greek island of Lesbos, where a number of refugee camps were already in operation. He began working in a clinic in Moria, one of the larger refugee camps. Much of the workload was practical giving support to medics, facilities education and play for children washing blankets and helping habitants do their own laundry. e were] making the organisation ttle stronger by increasing internacional training, that allowed to work more effectively,’ he says. t was mainly about trying to affect mediate change,’ he recalls. ‘I lised I’d be pretty useful on a rese boat that was based on the shoreline.’ haos and tragedy were, unsurprisingly, ever-present in the camps. I think I was very naïve when I first arrived,’ he admits. I had studied this stuff for so long that I thought I knew what to expect. I wasn’t prepared for the personal side of hearing about the refugee experience.
‘We had trained volunteers with psychological first aid, who could engage with someone who is extremely vulnerable without re-traumatising them,’ he recalls.
‘We had a psychological consultant who we could contact if you were feeling as though you’d had a bad day in clinic, and try and get some support for yourself.
‘I think it was probably more difficult for people who speak the languages like Arabic or Farsi, as they will get the brunt of the emotional context that I, with my scant Arabic, would probably get insulated from.’ In terms of what the refugees and displaced people experienced: ‘Most of them have lost family members, they arrive with almost nothing,’ Sean explains.
‘I don’t want to paint them as victims because they’re incredibly strong for surviving the conditions that they have. They are bloody tough and resilient.’
Many of those Sean encountered on Lesbos had come from Syria and Afghanistan, with a number of refugees also arriving from Sub-Saharan Africa.
‘Primarily, Syrians fleeing the war are slightly better educated than other populations might be, and many of them have aspirations to eventually return home — in fact, some of the Syrians I spoke to have already returned home,’ adds Sean.
Occasionally, like Sarah and her Olympian sister, Sean had reason to save refugees from the icy waters of the Mediterranean.
‘Part of what we did provide was children and adults with the right to life,’ Sean notes. ‘I don’t think that’s wrong. It shouldn’t be made illegal.
‘Whether you’re on the political right or left, people have a problem with allowing refugees into Europe. I think everyone should listen to those conversations, but whether you’re on the right or left, surely, no one deserves to die by drowning.’
Sean cites the ‘pull factor’ as a possible — albeit flimsy — reason as to why some EU and member states worry about certain humanitarian efforts.
Solidarity and help is seen as such, in other words, something that encourages asylum seekers and refugees to come to Europe. Amnesty International and other organisations claim that Sean’s case has embodied efforts to criminalise humanitarian work. It’s a theory that has held water in a climate that has become increasingly hostile towards migrants and refugees across Europe.
‘If you make the journey for a refugee safer, than by default you are making it easier for them to come over,’ he explains.
‘It really did cause me to reflect — am I being so naïve that I think I’m helping one person, but encouraging three others to make a dangerous journey?
‘The idea is that you cause people to come over by making the situation better for them, but all independent research that has gone into the idea of the pull factor shows that there’s no evidence of it. What the research did reveal is that the more NGOs in the water, the fewer refugees end up dying.
‘We’re not trying to compete with the government and the authorities. Ultimately, we all have the same thing in mind at the end of the day — making sure people aren’t in danger.’ Initially, Sean was arrested in February but was able to leave the country and even return to Ireland. Yet by August, events had taken a more serious turn. An arrest warrant was issued and he handed himself into police after learning that Mardini had been detained. ‘It was terrifying,’ he admits quietly. ‘It all happened rather fast. My grandmother had died two weeks previously so I was very much dealing with other things and I hadn’t prepared for this situation. That day, I got up at 6am to go into the clinic. When I got a call to say Sarah had been arrested, I said I’d go to the police station myself to try and figure it out. I had an idea that if they arrested Sarah, they would arrest me.’ Given the gravity of the charges, it was decided that the two would be placed in pre-trial detention, lest they attempt to flee the country. Initially Sean was sent to the prison in the city of Mytiline, where he spent seven weeks before being transferred to Chios prison. ‘It has nothing to do with being innocent or guilty,’ explains Sean. ‘In Mytiline, you don’t get outside, which is quite depressing and draining. At Chios, there’s a courtyard so it’s comparatively better. ‘I was in a cell with 17 people. The whole building is designed for 80 but we were 240 in total. I didn’t have too many troubles myself, but people who are in pre-trial detention like myself are there with people who have committed all manner of crimes. That can be quite shocking.’
Having a wonderful support network of family and friends — not to mention a mother who campaigned tirelessly from her base in Cork — was certainly a psychological bolster at the time.
‘I read a lot, but I taught English and German too to inmates, which was a good way of passing the time,’ he says. ‘There was the mandatory prison working out, too. I didn’t speak much Greek, so I stayed quiet and kept my head down most of the time. I did a lot of research on the criminalisation of humanitarians.’
Sean is wholly convinced of his innocence, and is happy to return to Greece for trial this year where it is hoped he will clear his name and put this ordeal behind him.
Still, the remote possibility of a further custodial sentence, and a potentially lengthy one at that, is rarely far from his mind.
‘My girlfriend is really into reading these stories about miscarriages of justice and she keeps me updated on prisoners who have been released after 25 years when they have done nothing wrong.’ Then he adds with a laugh: ‘She’s great at keeping my spirits high, clearly.’
Soon, Sean will travel to Brussels to meet with MEPs to discuss his case further.
But more than anything, he eventually hopes to return to humanitarian work.
‘The Irish are really quite welcoming to refugees, but I want to engage in the debate that there’s something about refugees coming into Europe that is dangerous,’ he says. ‘Mainly, I just want to hear other people’s opinions on that.
‘For me, it will be about informing myself about what others think, how others think differently, and why.’
‘I don’t think what we did was wrong’ ‘I was in a cell with 17 people’