Athens News Agency: News in English, 08-05-26
CONTENTS
[01] Illegals unwittingly enter Athos
[01] Illegals unwittingly enter Athos
Authorities on Monday announced that four women from Moldova had
unwittingly violated the ban on women by setting foot on peninsula of
Mount Athos, home to a self-governing community of all-male monasteries
that is also known as the Autonomous Monastic State of the Holy
Mountain.
The four women and one man were dropped off at the jetty of the Megisti
Lavra Monastery by migrant smugglers over the weekend.
Mount Athos occupies one of the three promontories that comprise the
verdant Halkidiki peninsula, east of Thessaloniki and almost in the
middle of the Macedonia province of northern Greece.
According to police inspector Stergios Apostolidis, monks discovered
two of the foreign women at the monastery's tiny harbour on Sunday
afternoon and alerted local police. A subsequent search by police and
coast guard officers led to the discovery the remaining three illegals,
who had spent the night on a nearby beach when they saw police arrive.
They told police that they were dropped off at the monastery by two
Ukrainian immigrant smugglers that had picked them up from Turkey. The
five would-be migrants, aged between 27 and 41, had each paid 4,000
euros to be ferried into Greece. They also claim that the Ukrainian
smugglers had dropped them off at the site without informing them that
they were on Mount Athos.
Caption: A file photo dated Wednesday 03 March 2004 shows the
Hilandarion Monastery, run by Serb monks, on the Mount Athos peninsula
of northern Greece. Mount Athos is home to a semi-autonomous monastic
community that dates back to the 5th century AD, from where women are
barred. ANA-MPA/EPA/KOTSIARIS
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