A Greek court has dismissed the trial of nine Egyptian men accused of triggering the largest migrant shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea in a decade.
Judges in Kalamata, a southern port city, concluded that they lacked jurisdiction to hear the case because the vessel sank in international waters.
More than 600 migrants are believed to have drowned when the Adriana, an overcrowded fishing boat, sank on its voyage to Europe from Libya last June.
If found guilty of people smuggling and causing the boat to drown, the accused faced life in jail.
Human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, said they had strong reservations about the integrity of the Greek investigation and evidence and questioned whether the defendants would receive a fair trial.
The Greek coastguard has constantly denied their actions brought about the disaster, and the authorities have rejected all claims of wrongdoing or of a cover-up. The allegations are being considered by the Greek Naval Court.
The nine defendants, who are Egyptian and aged between 20 and 41, went on trial on Tuesday.
All of the men were on board the fishing vessel “Adriana,” which drowned on June 14, 2018, in one of the deepest regions of the Mediterranean, in international waters but within Greece’s designated rescue area.
Though the ship went down in the Greek rescue zone, the prosecutor had previously accepted the defence’s claim that there was no legal basis to try the men because the ship went down outside of Greek waters.
The UN estimates that 500 more people may have perished, including 100 women and children who were in the boat’s hold, in addition to the 82 bodies that have been found.
When the boat sailed from the Libyan port of Tobruk about a week ago, it was thought to be carrying up to 750 people.
