Plane for migrants rejected by Lesvos, device now diverted | Inland

Action group ‘We’re going to get them’ wanted to get a group of migrants from Greece with a rented Boeing 189. State Secretary Ankie Broekers-Knol (Asylum) had rejected that plan on Friday. Despite this, the group wants to pick up people from the former Moria camp, which was destroyed by fire.

The plan was for the plane to “wait” for two days at Mytilini airport on Lesvos and hope to take the migrants with it to the Netherlands. But flight radar data shows that the plane did not land in Lesvos, but in Athens.

According to the action group, they were summoned half an hour before landing to deviate. The captain on the plane has been given ‘strict orders’ for this. It would be for security reasons. Permission to land on Lesvos had been granted before departure, but now appears to have been withdrawn.

Reception committee

Before departure the group was still in good spirits. “Exciting, but everything is still going according to plan. If all goes well, a reception committee of aid organizations and politicians awaits us there, ”says Johannes van den Akker.

It was previously announced that the coalition wants to receive fifty single children and fifty vulnerable migrants. Not enough, says ‘We are going to get them’. The action group still says it expects the State Secretary to make a different choice than the one she has made so far and hoped that the coalition would change its tack in those two days.

Buses

The action group already sent buses to Athens in 2018 with the same goal of picking up migrants. The buses then returned without success and empty. The then State Secretary Harbers (Justice) even warned against human smuggling against the attempt.

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