From the very first moment of his arrest, the unaccompanied minor consistently stated that he was underage. Still, criminal proceedings against him continued as though he were an adult, without the procedural guarantees owed to children.
After his transfer to the Malakasa Reception and Identification Centre (RIC) and the assumption of his legal representation by Equal Rights, a series of legal actions were undertaken to ensure that his age would be assessed in accordance with Greek law and applicable child-protection standards. As a result, the Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office of Athens ordered a formal age-assessment procedure under the applicable legal framework. Three separate examinations were conducted, including a second X-ray examination in Athens. Taking into account the findings of all examinations, the competent authorities concluded that the child is 16 years old.
The case was presented before the Court of Appeal for Felonies on 17 June 2026. The Court accepted the evidence, recognized the defendant’s minority, and referred the case to the competent Juvenile Court, which is specifically designed to handle cases involving children.
Crucially, the Court did not stop there. In the same decision, it granted the request to modify the restrictive measure that required the child to reside at the Malakasa RIC, and ordered his transfer to accommodation appropriate for unaccompanied minors, in line with applicable child-protection standards. In other words, recognition of his minority and his removal from a detention setting were achieved together, in a single ruling.
The case also highlights the challenges faced by many unaccompanied children arriving in Europe without identity documents. In such cases, determining a person’s age can be difficult, which makes it essential for authorities to apply reliable, multidisciplinary and child-sensitive age-assessment procedures that is respecting the principle of the doubt that also derives from EU law – a child is a child as long as nothing else is proven.
“This decision shows how the system should work: the moment a child is recognized as a child, they must be treated as one — including by being moved out of de facto pre-trial detention. Recognizing his age and ordering his transfer in the same ruling is exactly the protection the law promises,” said Ioanna Pavlou, lawyer representing the minor.
“Although the outcome in our client’s case was positive, the broader picture from the court that day was deeply concerning. Other similar cases resulted in convictions, with some defendants receiving sentences of up to 1,300 years. The difference for our client was that his age was properly assessed and acted upon in full,” said Marilena Kosmopoulou, who represented the child before the Court on 17 June 2026.
This is the second such case from Crete in which Equal Rights has secured the referral of an unaccompanied minor to the Juvenile Court within a matter of days, underlining that the prosecution of children as adults is not an isolated error but a recurring pattern.
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Contact: press@equal-rights.org
