‘Hitting the right nail’: Refugee rescue group defiant as Greece targets it

To Greek authorities, he is the nefarious Norwegian mastermind of an international criminal organisation “operationally structured to commit repeated crimes”, which he secretly controls from his hometown of Tromso, north of the Arctic Circle. To thousands of distressed asylum seekers on the Aegean, he is a hero who may have saved their lives by publicly alerting search and rescue authorities who might rather not have known of their whereabouts. A Greek court will open trial proceedings on Tuesday against Tommy Olsen to decide who is right. Olsen is the creator of Aegean Boat Report, an independent monitor of distressed vessels in the Aegean.