Migrant crisis: Chaos on Greek islands as aid workers quit refugee camps in protest

By Oscar Webb, in Lesbos and Martin Banks in Brussels
8:39PM BST 27 Mar 2016

The eastern Aegean Islands are struggling to cope with a humanitarian and public order crisis after several major international organisations pulled out of refugee camps last week in protest at the scheme they say is inhumane 

Scenes of chaos awaited thousands of EU staff due to start arriving on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios today to begin processing asylum seekers under a controversial EU deal to deport them back to Turkey. 

The eastern Aegean Islands are struggling to cope with a humanitarian and public order crisis after several major international organisations pulled out of refugee camps last week in protest at the scheme they say is inhumane. 

The UNHCR, Mecidin Sans Frontiers, the International Rescue Committee, Save the Children and the Norwegian Refugee Council all halted their logistical and aid programmes for refugees on the islands this week, saying that they wanted no part in a system of detention and deportation. 

Volunteers and supporters protest outside a refugee camp on Lesvos Island  EPA/STRATIS BALASKAS

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Thousands of refugees continued to arrive by boat last week after the deal came into effect and have been detained in camps on the islands, where Greek police are struggling to keep control. 

Protests erupted in detention camps on Lesbos and Chios where living conditions have become increasingly squalid following the withdrawal of the NGOs. Clashes also broke out between Greek security forces and activists. While arrivals have declined significantly over the past week, migrant boats are still making the trip and there are questions over how rapidly the 4,000-strong EU team will be able to process the asylum claims, each of which must be assessed individually. 

The returns are to begin on April 4, with one Syrian refugee to be relocated from a Turkishcamp to Europe in exchange for each migrant deported. The aim is for 6,000 relocations to be completed within the next month and at least 20,000 by mid-May 2016. 

An estimated 47,500 migrants are currently stranded on Greek territory after the route through the Balkans slammed shut. 

Yesterday, at the Greece Macedonia border, hundreds of migrants tried to force their way through police lines after rumours spread of an attempt to break through. 

They were pushed back by hundreds of Iraqi and Syrian refugees who insisted they were not taking part in the protest, which they said was being encouraged by activists. 

Earlier this month, two Afghan refugees, one of them a pregnant woman, drowned trying to cross a swollen river on the border after activists circulated leaflets advertising the attempted break through.

Algerian arrested in Italy in connection with probe into Paris, Brussels attacks

An Algerian national wanted by Belgium over a probe into fake ID documents used by the Paris and Brussels attackers was arrested in Italy on Saturday, local media reported, citing police sources. 

The suspect, named as Djamal Eddine Ouali, 40, was detained under a European arrest warrant in the southern region of Salerno, the reports said.

Ouali was arrested in the southwestern town of Bellizzi as part of a joint operation between anti-terrorist forces and Rome's special operations police, they said.

He was suspected of being part of a criminal network that produced fake documents for illegal immigration, the AGI news agency reported.

The alleged accomplice of the Brussels attackers would be extradited to Belgium in the coming days, it added.

Suspicions were raised after local immigration officials checked Ouali's residency permit. Police had been searching for a man with the same name and belonging to the same organisation since January 6.

Hundreds of digital photographs were then seized from a counterfeiter's workshop, including three of those who planned the deadly attacks in Paris in November.

One of those photographed was Najim Laachraoui, a suicide bomber at Brussels airport, reports quoted police as saying.

Investigations are ongoing as to how Ouali came to be in Italy and into the networks of which he may have been a part.

(AFP)

Sources say Ibrahim El Bakraoui was on US counterterrorism watch list before Paris attacks

Belgian police arrested three more people on Friday as investigations into Tuesday's suicide bombings by Islamist militants in Brussels threw up more links to killings in Paris last year. 

The federal prosecutor's office said the operation was connected to the arrest in Paris on Thursday of an Islamist convicted in Belgium last year and suspected of plotting a new attack. 

Nine people in total have been arrested since Thursday in Belgium and two in Germany, as European authorities swoop on Islamic State militants they link both to the Brussels bombings that killed 31 people and to the attacks in Paris last November that killed 130. 

Ahead of one of the arrests, heavily armed police and troops with trucks cordoned off an area around a major intersection in the northern Brussels borough of Schaerbeek. Three blasts could be heard, which the local mayor Bernard Clerfayt said were controlled explosions. 

Belgian police drag a suspect along a tramway platform, in this still image taken from amateur video, after the suspect was shot, in the Brussels borough of Schaerbeek

Belgian public broadcaster RTBF quoted Mr Clerfayt as saying the suspect had been detained after being wounded and that he was linked to Tuesday's suicide bombings in Brussels. 

Witnesses said police appeared to shoot the man in the leg at a tram stop and that he appeared to have his daughter with him. 

"We heard 'Don't move'. The man was sitting at the bus stop, a bus stop with a glass wall, and we heard a small detonation and a big detonation," said Norman Kabir, 38, an electrician who lives and works nearby. 

"Then the police came, took the little girl who was shouting 'Dad', she seemed terrified and the man got shot in the leg anyway because he was still moving," Kabir told reporters. 

Belgian police drag a suspect along a tramway platform, in this still image taken from amateur video, after the suspect was shot, in the Brussels borough of Schaerbeek

"Then the police asked him to move his bag. He was lying on the ground, but he did it and pushed the bag and a robot from the mine-sweeping brigade arrived. It came, grabbed the bag and took it away, then they took the guy, put him in a car and left. It took 20 seconds." 

Video showed the man lying on his side, shattered glass from the tram shelter smashed by bullets at his feet. 

The attacks have raised questions over Europe's ability to combat the threat of terrorism. Ibrahim El Bakraoui, one of the Brussels suicide bombers, was on a US counterterrorism watch list before the November attacks in Paris and his brother Khalid was put on the list shortly afterward, sources familiar with the matter said. 

The Belgian federal prosecutor's office said six people were held in Brussels on Thursday, of whom three were released and three were remanded in custody facing possible charges. 

Three others were detained on Friday following the arrest overnight in France of Reda Kriket, a 34-year-old Frenchman sentenced to 10 years in absentia in Brussels last July as part of an Islamist recruiting network dubbed the Syrian Connection. 

Salah Abdeslam

In Germany, Der Spiegel magazine said German police had arrested two people, one of whom had received phone messages with the name of the metro station bomber and the word "fin" - French for "end" - three minutes before the metro blast. The German interior ministry declined comment. 

The Brussels attacks came a week after Belgian police killed a militant during a house raid that led them to Salah Abdeslam, the only suspected participant in the Paris attacks to have been captured alive. 

On Friday prosecutors said Abdeslam had declined to talk about Tuesday's attacks, having declared soon after his capture that he would exercise his right to be silent. 

Naim al-Hamed

Belgian daily De Morgen said investigators had identified a new suspect they believe played a role in the Brussels bombings, 28-year-old Syrian Naim al-Hamed. The paper said he was on a list circulated to the security services of other European countries after Tuesday's attacks, and was also suspected of involvement in the Paris attacks. 

Anti-immigrant leftists win Slovakia elections

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico won Saturday’s parliamentary election, nearly complete results showed, but gains by opposition parties including far-right extremists will complicate formation of a new government.

Fico, a leftist whose anti-immigration views are in line with neighbours Poland and Hungary, took 28.7 percent of the vote, far ahead of others but less than around 35 percent predicted in opinion surveys, results from 91 percent of voting districts showed.
With euro zone member Slovakia due to take over the European Union’s rotating presidency from July, giving it a bigger role in EU policy discussions over the bloc’s migration crisis, the election is being watched closely in Brussels.
Fico bet on a combination of popular welfare measures such as free train rides for students and pensioners and his opposition to accepting refugees to secure a third term, after ruling from 2006-2010 and 2012-2016.
The results showed that at least eight groups may win seats in the new parliament.
Fico, who had hoped to rule with one smaller coalition partner, said building a new coalition in a highly fragmented parliament would take time and be tough, given the “very complicated” election results.
“As the party that won the election we have the obligation to try build a meaningful and stable government,” Fico told reporters.
“It will not be easy, I am saying that very clearly.”
Fico, who dismisses multiculturalism as “a fiction”, has pledged never to accept EU-agreed quotas on relocating refugees who have flooded into Greece and Italy from Syria and beyond.
Slovakia has a tiny Muslim minority. It has not seen any large numbers of refugees pass through its territory.
Opponents portray him as an inefficient and unsavory populist who ignores the need to reform education and healthcare. However, most opposition parties in the predominantly Catholic country agree with Fico’s hardline stance on Muslim immigrants.
If Fico fails to put together a government, a group of centre-right parties could try to form a broad but possibly unstable anti-Fico coalition, a repeat of the 2010 election.
Any centre-right coalition would include the libertarian Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party, which held second place in the partial results with 11.5 percent of the vote. The party’s refusal to provide guarantees for a bailout of Greece brought down the previous centre-right government in 2012.
Extremists in parliament
Slovakia is one of the euro zone’s most financially sound states, popular with foreign investors, particularly car makers.
But unemployment of more than 10 percent and vast regional differences in wealth, as well corruption and low healthcare and education standards, have disappointed many voters.
The results showed Fico’s bet on immigration fears may have brought votes to others. The far-right radical group of central Slovak Governor Marian Kotleba won 8.2 percent of the vote, nearly three times more than opinion polls had predicted.
Kotleba has in the past sported uniforms reminiscent of the Nazi-era Slovak state, and was investigated, but not found guilty of, spreading hatred toward the Roma minority.
A new anti-immigration party of businessman Boris Kollar also surprisingly crossed the 5 percent threshold to win seats.