Acid attack perpetrator gets 15 years

A 37-year-old woman, Efi Kakarantzoula, was unanimously sentenced to 15 years in prison on Wednesday after she was unanimously found guilty of attempted murder, for dousing Ioanna Paliospyrou, 35, with acid in the Athens suburb of Kallithea in May 2020.

The jury did not recognize any mitigating factor, not even that of her previously clean criminal record, as requested by her defense lawyer. 

Rejecting the request for recognition of mitigating circumstances, case prosecutor Charalambos Mastrantonakis, said Kakarantzoula executed her criminal plan “in a calculated manner.” 

“She had vile motives, murderous egoism and moral pettiness,” he said.

The type of acid used and the way she executed her crime “leaves no doubt about her murderous intent,” Mastrantonakis stressed.

“The defendant did not want to ruin the face of Ioanna [the victim], she ruined her life. When she threw the acid in her face, she accepted that it could be inhaled, swallowed, find its way to her trachea, and kill her,” he said, adding that “it was revenge that accepted the risk of death.”

Paliospyrou, who was left severely disabled for life by the attack, welcomed the court decision in tears. 

The convicted woman claimed during the trial that she had no intent of killing Paliospyrou and that she began stalking her after suspecting her of dating a man with whom Kakarantzoula had embarked on a sexual relationship in 2018.

During the trial over the incident which shocked the nation, her lawyer had asked the court to reduce the charges against his client from attempted murder to grievous bodily harm, arguing the lack of intent.

Kakarantzoula, however, admitted to going to significant lengths to procure the sulfuric acid she threw at Paliospyrou outside the victim’s place of work in an office building, saying she paid a man she met outside a shop in downtown Athens to get it for her.