A member of the European Parliament has appeared in court in Greece after being convicted of being a leading member of a criminal organisation along with members of the far-right Golden Dawn party.

Ioannis Lagos, who faces up to 15 years in prison, travelled from Brussels to Athens to attend the sentencing hearings. He made a formal request for the three judges trying the case to be replaced.

Lagos told the court: “I believe that there is a prevailing bias against the defendants and that the judges involved in the case came under direct and indirect pressure from the political establishment.”

Lagos and 17 other former Greek parliament members from Golden Dawn were convicted last week of leading a criminal organisation, or simple membership, and face sentences of between five and 15 years in prison.

Dozens of other Golden Dawn members and associates were also convicted of numerous offences, from murder and violent assaults against immigrants to perjury.

Presiding judge Maria Lepenioti said mitigating circumstances would be granted to four former MPs and 10 other convicted members on grounds of age, expressions of remorse, and lack of prior convictions. Leniency was not recognised for Lagos or six other former parliament members considered to be leaders of the organisation.

Golden Dawn was founded as a Neo-Nazi group in the 1980s but saw a surge in popularity during the recent financial crisis, gaining parliamentary representation between 2012 and 2019.

The five-year trial was launched following the 2013 murder of rap singer and left-wing activist Pavlos Fyssas, who was stabbed to death by a Golden Dawn supporter.

Hundreds of protesters, many from left-wing groups and labour unions, gathered outside the court and chanted “smash the fascists in every neighbourhood”.

Police banned a rally planned by supporters of Golden Dawn. Sentences are expected to be announced later on Monday unless the judges are replaced.

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British singer and actor Sting called world leaders “half men and cowards” on Saturday for their inability to solve the refugee crisis.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has already played down expectations of a breakthrough at hastily-arranged talks among EU leaders on Sunday on the migration dispute dividing Europe and threatening her own government.

Austrian Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache said on Saturday he expects a chain reaction across the European Union if Germany closes its borders to refugees.

Migration policies in the U.S. have also been in the spotlight.

“Thank God for Greece because you have shown the way,” said Sting, whose real name is Gordon Sumner, at an Amnesty International event in Athens.

“You have shown how to treat refugees when other people are building walls. When children are being taken from their mothers and put in cages, you are acting with compassion and generosity and commonsense,” he said.

“Because our so-called leaders, a sad parade of half-men, cowards, have not got the solutions … Once again Greece has shown us how to be civilized.”

Nearly a million refugees passed through and got support from Greece in 2015, as the country was dealing with its own major financial crisis.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday abandoned a policy of separating migrant children from their parents on the U.S.-Mexico border, after images of youngsters in cages sparked outrage at home and abroad.

Sting told Reuters the family separation policy was “brutal” and “barbaric”.

The former frontman for The Police was in Athens for two concerts as part of world tour.

Refugees stranded in Greece suffered sub-zero temperatures and heavy snowfall on Tuesday at camps not designed for winter weather and the government promised those on one island temporary warm accommodations aboard a navy ship.

A mid-winter icy spell and snowstorms have gripped central and southeastern Europe for days, and parts of Greece have been covered in rare snow with temperatures dipping to -20 degrees Celsius this week. Snow also fell in Athens on Tuesday.

More than 60,000 refugees and migrants have been trapped in Greece since Balkan countries along the main, northward overland route to wealthy western Europe sealed their borders last March. Most now live in overcrowded camps across Greece in abandoned factories or warehouses, or in tents which lack insulation or heating.

“Cold, it’s very cold for children – it’s not like Syria,” said Rostam, a 34-year-old Syrian Kurd who has been living in a camp near the village of Ritsona in eastern Greece near Athens for 10 months with his wife and three young children.

Temperatures hovered at -1 degrees at the camp, a collection shipping containers in a forest where clothes left on hanging on lines outdoors had frozen stiff.

Humanitarian aid organizations, including the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, have pressed Greece to quickly transfer those on freezing, snowbound Aegean islands to the mainland or other European countries.

“The situation is very difficult and especially dangerous for children,” said George Protopapas, Greece director of international organisation SOS Children’s Villages.

“Power outages, freezing temperatures, snow and freezing rain have hampered access to some refugee camps and created very hazardous conditions for all those in temporary shelters.”

Conditions were considerably worse on the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos, where more than 5,000 asylum seekers have been waiting for months for their applications to be processed.

Scores of summer tents weighed down by thick snow resembled igloos after several days of icy weather on the island. On Tuesday, the government said it was sending a naval ship to Lesbos to accommodate migrants. It was also scrambling to transfer others to hotels.

“It is important to take immediate measures to ensure that men, women and children are housed in decent accommodation suitable for winter,” the Greek branch of global health charity Medecins du Monde said in a statement.

For some refugees who have been in limbo in Greece for months, things have been worse.

“It’s normal, we’re used to living like this,” said a 25-year-old Syrian who gave his name as Ahmad, one of the first to arrive in the Ritsona camp. “This is not one day or two days, this is 10 months.”

As Ramadan began in Germany on Monday, Syrian asylum seeker Khairallah Swaid said he would pray for a reunion with his wife, who is stranded at a camp in Greece, and crave his mother’s makloubeh, a meat and rice dish served during the fasting month.

The Muslim holy month that began this year on June 6 revolves around daily fasts from sunrise to sunset, and then favourite meals with family and friends during the night hours.

But for many of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who came to Europe last year – mainly Muslims escaping war, conflict and poverty in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond – Ramadan this time around will be a much more subdued affair.

In Germany, most are still living in shelters where they have long complained that the food served by caterers contracted by local authorities is “inedible”. Their protest has grown raucous with the approach of the religious festival.

“You can’t have Ramadan without good food,” said 25-year-old Swaid, sitting next to his brother Hamza at Sham (Levant), a popular Syrian snack bar in Neukoelln, a poor district of Berlin with a large migrant population.

Swaid, who lives in a shelter north of the German capital, spends most of the 120 euros ($136) he gets a month on food. He and other asylum seekers chip in for flatbread, rice and vegetables, which they cook using a kettle.

“I miss my wife, but during Ramadan I will miss my mother’s food more,” joked Swaid a few days before Ramadan, eating pieces of flatbread stuffed with chicken shawarma and garlic paste.

Many shelters in Berlin are hosting Ramadan for the first time and some are trying to ensure a pleasant dining experience.

At Tempelhof, a former airport built by Hitler to showcase Nazi power and now home to some 5,000 migrants, a spokeswoman for a company running the shelter said guests would be offered dates and water after fasting, in line with Muslim tradition.

BREAD, SAUSAGE, YOGHURT, CHEESE, JAM

In addition, the sunrise-to-sunset fast lasts longer in northern Europe now than in the Middle East. With the June sun rising earlier and setting later in Europe, it can be two to three hours longer for migrants than for those back home.

As the sun set in a crimson blaze over the Oresund strait dividing Denmark and Sweden, the Muslim residents of Hemmeslovs Herrgard asylum camp waited impatiently in the cafeteria queue.

At 09:30 p.m., half an hour before sunset, the line was already 25 meters (yards) long. The cafeteria was abuzz with children playing and adults chatting with plates and mugs in their hands, ready to chow down at exactly 10:00 p.m..

Magnus Falk, the camp manager, stood with a bag of bread in his hand, trying to calm people down.

“They were dissatisfied with the content of the breakfast snack,” he said. About half of the 300 residents observes Ramadan. They all get a bag of bread with sausage, yogurt, cheese and jam to eat just before dawn breaks at around 03:30 a.m. to bolster themselves for another day of fasting.

Mohammed, a Syrian from a town near Aleppo, has found some abandoned pieces of bread on the ground outside the cafeteria, which he tears up and throws outside the window of his room.

“We like to throw leftover bread out for the birds, so me and my siblings can watch them up close,” he said. In Islam, Muslims should not throw away leftover food, but give it instead to the needy or to animals.

Mohammed, who came with his family of five to Sweden nine months ago and is now waiting for an interview with the Migration Agency, is not impressed with the food in the home. He says migrants try to make it more appetising by adding spices.

“Normally we cook very nice Arabic food during Ramadan and eat with friends, but here we are alone. But we still celebrate Ramadan, because it is a tradition,” he said.

GREEK CAMP CONDITIONS

In Greece, Muslim migrants stranded since countries along the Balkans route closed their borders, say the scorching heat and poor conditions at the state-run camps are making it harder to observe the holy month.

“We can’t stay in the tent because it’s too hot and the children are vomiting or (have) diarrhoea because the place is so dirty,” said Mahdieh, a 14-year-old living at Schisto, a state-run tent camp in a former military base near Athens.

Mahdieh, whose family fled Afghanistan’s Logar province because they were threatened by the Taliban, remembers Ramadan at home as a time when families would get together to talk, laugh and be happy.

“(Here) we have depression, we are tired, we don’t know how we can stay here,” she said.

Abdul Baseer Nomand used to work as a technical consultant for the German army in Afghanistan and arrived in Greece just before the borders shut in February. Now he lives in a tent with his wife and five children and wonders how camp authorities would accommodate their needs.

“Today is the first day. Let’s see what they have for us,” he said. “If the weather is hot, it’s very difficult for everyone because they will be thirsty. The problem is that here the environment is not suitable for proper living,” he said.

Like others forced to flee home, he longed for the time it is safe enough for them to return.

“Everyone is missing his family, his country, and this is very hard,” he said. “(It’s) so difficult for people far away from their country, from their neighbours, from their relatives.”