Greece: continued judicial harassment against migrants’ rights defender Panayote Dimitras

The Observatory has been informed about a new summon and scheduled appeal hearing against migrants’ rights defender Mr Panayote Dimitras. Mr Dimitras is the co-founder and spokesperson of Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM) – an NGO engaged in the protection of human and minority rights and in the fight against discrimination in Greece – and a member of OMCT’s General Assembly.

On 29 November 2024, Panayote Dimitras received a summon from the Second Three-Member Misdemeanours Appeals Court of Athens for an appeal hearing related to the charges of “false accusation” and “aggravated defamation” (Articles 229 and 363 of the Criminal Code of Greece, respectively) for having denounced racist comments from a public official. The appeal hearing will be held on 19 February 2025.

The Observatory recalls that the trial stems from a complaint that Mr Dimitras himself had filed on 19 December 2018 against Mr Christos Kalyviotis, then Mayor of Limni - Mantoudi - Agia Anna, before the Department for Combating Racist Violence (Attica Division) of the Hellenic Police. According to this complaint, Mr Kalyviotis had violated the Greek Law on Combatting Racism and Xenophobia by equating asylum seekers and refugees to criminals in a public statement released on 13 December 2018. On 4 July 2019, Mr Dimitras’ complaint was dismissed and archived by the Prosecutor. However, on 22 April of the same year Mr Kalyviotis filed a lawsuit against Mr Dimitras for “false accusation” and “aggravated defamation”. Mr Kalyviotis alleged that, in his complaint, Mr Dimitras had accused the then Mayor of being an organiser of racist gatherings. For his part, Mr Dimitras maintained that the only accusation he had levelled against Mr Kalyviotis was that of having made a racist statement and that, although the initial complaint made reference to racist gatherings and generically accused their organisers, Mr Kalyviotis was not referred to as one of them. On 16 July 2019, Mr Kalyviotis’ complaint was transferred to the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Athens Court of First Instance, and on 8 January 2020 a preliminary investigation against Mr Dimitras was opened.

On 17 April 2024, the Three-Member Misdemeanours Court of Athens acquitted Panayote Dimitras by concluding that “it is clear that the defendant never filed a false complaint or falsely claimed about the [Mayor] that he was supposedly organising racist gatherings. The racist gatherings with barricades in the area are vaguely attributed to ‘their organisers’, with no connection whatsoever to the then Mayor.” However, on 25 April 2024 the Athens First Instance Prosecutor appealed the decision by arguing that Mr Dimitras’ complaint contained “photographs of unidentified residents allegedly protesting against the sudden arrival and transfer of refugees in their area” and that such inclusion misled the reader to “associate the alleged racist statements of the Mayor-plaintiff with the reactions of the residents as a result of incitement and stirring to riot”. Mr Dimitras refutes such an argument and points out that Mr Kalyviotis never made such a claim during the first instance trial, and never alleged the existence of a nexus between the inclusion of photos in Mr Dimitras’ complaint and a purported incitement to riot.

The procedure initiated by Mr Kalyviotis is only one out of many abusive criminal proceedings brought against Panayote Dimitras over the past few years and constitutive of strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs).

On 13 March 2024, the Three-Member Misdemeanours Court of Athens put an end to another prosecution initiated against Mr Dimitras under similar charges of “false accusation” and “aggravated defamation” resulting from a complaint filed against him, in February 2019, by Mr Kostas Katsikis, then Member of the Greek Parliament for the extreme-right party Independent Greeks. In November 2017, Mr Dimitras had filed a complaint against Mr Katsikis for “public incitement to violence or hatred” after Mr Katsikis allegedly made a racist, homophobic, and transphobic speech during a parliamentary debate on 12 December 2016.

On 16 June 2023, the Athens Court of Appeal acquitted Panayote Dimitras and his colleague Ms Andrea Gilbert, GHM specialist on anti-Semitism, in another case of “false accusation” stemming from a complaint for “public incitement to violence or hatred” and “abuse of ecclesiastical office” that they had filed, in April 2017, against the Metropolitan Bishop of Piraeus Seraphim. In first instance, the two GHM members had been sentenced to a twelve-month prison sentence suspended for three years.

On 8 June 2023, the Three-Member Misdemeanours Court of Athens granted Mr Dimitras’ appeal against his referral to trial and dropped the charges of “false accusation” and “aggravated defamation” brought against him by a police officer after Mr Dimitras had filed a complaint against him in relation with a homophobic statement.

On 3 February 2023, the same court had granted Mr Dimitras’ appeal against his referral to trial following another complaint for “false accusation” and “aggravated defamation” filed, on 26 March 2019, by musician and actor Mr Yannis Zouganelis. In December 2018, Mr Dimitras had filed a complaint against Mr Zouganelis after he had made racist comments against Greece-based migrants in a television statement on 19 December 2018.

Currently, Panayote Dimitras is facing two additional lawsuits to those mentioned above and one criminal complaint. The first lawsuit stems from a complaint that he filed in 2021 against extreme-right leader Mr Failos Kranidiotis, after the politician had published a tweet in which he called all refugees “illegal plunderers”. In response to the complaint, Mr Kranidiotis filed a civil lawsuit against Mr Dimitras for “alleged insult” and requested 120,000 Euros for moral damage. On 20 October 2023, an Athens Multi-Member First Instance Court (with Judgment 3577/2023) ruled that the GHM complaint was libelous and awarded Mr Kranidiotis 3,000 Euros for moral damage. Mr Dimitras’ and Mr Kranidiotis’ appeals before the Athens Three-Member Appeals Court are to be heard on 18 September 2025. The second lawsuit was filed by Mr Kalyviotis seeking 25,000 Euros for moral damages and is pending before the courts. Moreover, Mr Dimitras is being accused in a criminal case of “forming or joining for profit and by profession a criminal organisation with the purpose of facilitating the entry and stay of third country nationals into Greek territory” for having provided humanitarian assistance to asylum seekers. The proceeding has resulted in severe preventive measures against him, including a 10,000 Euros bail, a ban to travel abroad and the freezing of one bank account which was lifted only after 18 months.

Several international institutions and human rights bodies have expressed concern over this latter case and the measures adopted therein, including: the European Parliament in its resolution of 7 February 2024 on the rule of law and media freedom in Greece (2024/2502(RSP)); the UN Human Rights Committee in the Concluding observations on the third periodic report of Greece of 28 November 2024 (CCPR/C/GRC/CO/3); and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in its Concluding observations on the combined twenty-third and twenty-fourth periodic reports of Greece of 24 December 2024 (CERD/C/GRC/CO/23-24).

The Observatory strongly condemns the continued judicial harassment against Panayote Dimitras, which appears to be solely aimed at silencing him and at obstructing his legitimate human rights work. The Observatory urges the Greek authorities to ensure the respect of Mr Dimitras’ rights to due process and fair trial, and to put an immediate end to the judicial harassment against him.

The Observatory also calls on the Greek authorities to protect human rights defenders from abusive proceedings, whose perpetrators should be brought to justice and, if found guilty, duly punished, and to guarantee in all circumstances that human rights defenders are able to carry out their legitimate activities without fear of reprisals, as also urged by the aforementioned human rights bodies.