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Greek NGO founder arrested in migration probe

The founder of a Greek NGO facing charges for allegedly helping migrants illegally enter the country was arrested Wednesday, police said. Panos Moraitis, who set up Emergency Response Centre International and was until recently the CEO of maritime security firm Aspida, gave himself up on the island of Lesbos after being sought for three weeks. Moraitis is expected to appear before a prosecutor on Friday. ERCI's field director Nassos Karakitsos, programme director Mirella Alexou and two volunteers, German-Irish national Sean Binder and Syrian refugee Sarah Mardini, were arrested earlier and have spent weeks in pre-trial detention. Requests for their conditional release have been turned down, the volunteers' lawyer Haris Petsikos told AFP. The police are seeking 30 people overall in what they say is an operation to dismantle a "criminal network" on Lesbos, where some 11,000 migrants are living in camps and rented accommodation. Police accuse ERCI members of offering direct assistance to people traffickers and asking for advance warning of arrivals without passing on the information to authorities. ERCI has denied the accusations and stresses it had closely worked with the authorities to save lives for the past three years. Mardini and her sister Yusra's plight to reach Lesbos from Turkey made the news in 2015, when they used their swimming skills to pull to safety their water-logged boat with another 18 people onboard The following year Yusra, now a UNHCR goodwill ambassador, participated on the refugee team at the Rio 2016 Olympics and Mardini went on to win a scholarship at Bard College in Berlin. Lesbos has been a key gateway into the European Union since the start of the bloc's migration crisis in 2015. At the height of the influx, some 5,000 migrants and refugees, mostly from war-torn Syria, landed on the island's beaches on a daily basis. It now has the highest concentration of migrants in Greece, with the worst conditions in the Moria camp where over 8,000 people live, according to UN figures -- about triple the nominal capacity. Most wait months for their asylum applications to be processed. Living conditions are squalid and violent flare-ups common. Earlier this year, three Spaniards and two Danes were also accused of trying to help migrants illegally enter Greece. A court cleared them in May.