AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL HAS said “humanity is on trial” as court proceedings are due to get underway later in Greece against Irishman Seán Binder.

Binder, who was born in Germany but raised in Castlegregory, Co Kerry, travelled to the island of Lesbos in late 2017 to volunteer with the Emergency Response Centre, a Greek search-and-rescue NGO.

He worked patrolling the Greek coastline, spotting rubber boats in distress and assisting people who made it to shore.

In 2018, he was charged along with 23 other volunteers for a range of offences including misdemeanour counts of espionage-related offences, illegal access to state communications and assisting criminal activity.

He was placed in pretrial detention for more than 100 days and in 2023, the lesser misdemeanour charges against Binder and 23 others relating to the smuggling of migrants were dropped.

However, more serious charges remained pending and Binder and the others will stand trial at the Court of Appeal in Lesbos’s capital, Mytilene, later.

Speaking to The Guardian ahead of today’s proceedings, Binder said he is “glad we are here”.

“We’re now in our seventh year and we’ve just wanted to get to this point because we’re pretty confident that doing search-and-rescue is not in fact criminal, and a court will find that to be the case.”

Sarah Mardini, the refugee immortalised in the Netflix movie The Swimmers, is also expected to take the stand.

Amnesty said Binder and the 23 other defendants are on trial for their work as volunteer rescuers, helping people in distress and at risk of drowning at sea.

It warned that they face charges including membership of a criminal organisation, money laundering, and smuggling and risk up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Amnesty said these charges “aim to portray those who help people on the move as criminals” and added that it is “part of a trend sweeping across Europe that’s criminalising solidarity”.

Human Rights Watch and the United Nations are among the other organisations to express concern about the case.

Wies de graeve, Executive Director of Amnesty International Belgium, warned that the trials should “set off alarms not only for Europe’s civil society but for any person’s ability to act according to their conscience”.

“It isn’t just Seán who is on trial here, it’s solidarity itself.

“The criminalisation of people showing compassion for those compelled to leave their homes because of war, violence or other hardships must stop. People who save lives should be supported, not criminalised.”

De graeve said he will be in court today as the trial resumes.

Speaking to The Journal in 2023, Binder remarked: “In an ideal world there would be no need for search-and-rescue because people would not be drowning.

“And twenty-something-year-old volunteers shouldn’t be the way that we respond to people in distress; but that is the reality we live in.”