Activist who gave Syrians a lift ‘guilty’ of people smuggling

A prominent children's rights campaigner who offered a lift to a Syrian family at the height of last year's migrant influx has been found guilty of smuggling by a court in Denmark, her lawyer said.

Lisbeth Zornig Andersen and her husband Michael Lindholm were each fined 22,250 Danish crowns (€2,980) under Denmark's aliens Act, which bans providing transport to people without a resident's permit.

Ms Zornig Andersen, a former chair of the Danish national children's council, drove the family of six to her home as hundreds of refugees and migrants crossed into Denmark from Germany in September last year.

The couple served the family coffee and cakes before Mr Lindholm took the Syrians to a railway station from where they intended to travel to Sweden, Danish media reported.

‘Wrong decision’

"This was the wrong decision by the judge. Since no money changed hands, this could not be seen as smuggling under the United Nations protocol against the smuggling of migrants," the couple's lawyer, Bjorn Elmquist, said in a phone interview.

Denmark, like its neighbour Sweden and a host of other European Union countries, has tightened border controls in response to the migrant and refugee crisis which has engulfed the bloc, prompting intense discussions with transit country Turkey.

“I am not proud of this for our country. Our legislation is bad. I had hoped the judges would have kept an open mind to that,” Mr Elmquist told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone after the verdict at the court in Nykobing.

The couple have two weeks to appeal, Mr Elmquist said.

Reuters