In Greece, civilian militias are blaming migrants for fires and hunting them down

[oldtimer]

The problem in Greece on that subject is the complicated legal system and the strong government control of the judiciary, that creates an impression of weak law and order.

Here is a long explanation:

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Arson in Greece requires more than just witness testimony and most of the evidence gets destroyed by the fire, so in almost all arson cases the accused are freed, encouraging such criminal acts.
Even if suspects can be imprisoned for 18 months without trial, the average trial takes about 10 years to be completed.

In this case, the migrants are prosecuted for possesion of explosive devises, but at the same time a different prosecutor is prosecuting those who detained them, even if it's legal for citizens to detain suspects until the police arrive.

Then those prosecuted for detaining them where released after a conflict between the prosecutor and the interogator.

And all this because the greek government automatically issued a public rebuke to anyone harming migrants (unleashing a prosecutor to order the arrest of a group of people) and then u-turned after the public reaction against the government (unleashing a different prosecutor to arrest a different group and setting the previous ones free).

Since the government appoints the judiciary and there is no jury, the government has practical control in any legal matter of public importance. ( see also the recent greek-croatian spat )

That, plus the strong impression that the judiciary is corrupt also leads to very low police morale and indifference by them (why arrest criminals when the judge sets them free ?).

That's why in certain areas (like in Crete) the public solves disputes by it's own hands and guns.

[oldtimer]

I presume its not actually migrants starting the fires in the vast majority of cases at least?

It's complicated.

Since convictions for arson are very difficult to do under greek law, no one really knows.

If we talk suspects, the power pylons, old semi-senile people setting fire to the garden, migrants who get hired to set fire, working class repairmen with a blow torch saying oops, that's probably the vast majority.

Most farming and construction work actually occurs in the summer, that makes it worse for accidental fires.

There is also a class of people called "arresters" (in greek "autophorakides"), who's job is to get arrested instead of the real criminals in case the police needs to arrest someone, that also messes up crime statistics.

[oldtimer]

They must have learnt from their ancestors (Spartans).

Funny thing is, the job of detaining Syrians has been given to Albanians.

Which sums up the possible future ethnic conflict within Greece, white migrants vs brown migrants.