Greek police have arrested a man who was holding migrants in a trailer and asking citizens to "go out and get" the migrants he accuses of setting forest fires in Greece.
The man was detained after a video posted on social media showed a jeep pulling a trailer down a dirt road in northern Greece, and he can be heard asking another person to open the doors. Two immigrants can be seen crammed inside the trailer.
"Get organized, let's all go out and get them. They will burn us..." the man, who police say is a foreign citizen, can be heard saying in Greek. In a statement, police said the man, who owned the vehicle, had illegally detained 13 Syrian and Pakistani migrants. Two Greek citizens who allegedly helped him were also detained.
The three are expected to appear before a prosecutor on Wednesday, after which it will be decided whether they will be arrested and formally charged. A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the 13 migrants had also been detained for entering the country illegally.
The ANA news agency said a Supreme Court prosecutor had ordered an investigation into the video. The prosecutor is quoted as saying that the "phenomena of racist violence against immigrants are worrying" and described the video as "a racist delusion, accusing immigrants of 'burning' us and inciting others to racist pogroms, calling them to organize and imitate it." .
Major forest fires have broken out in Greece in recent days, with the biggest front in the northern region of Evros, on the border with Turkey, from where migrants often cross into Greece via the river that separates the two countries.
The burned bodies of 18 people, believed to be immigrants, were found Tuesday in a rural part of the region.
