Guilty verdicts decried as too lenient
Only five people convicted in Mati fire trial, handed prison sentences with the alternative of a fine
The first round of the judicial investigation into the tragedy at Mati in eastern Attica in 2018 concluded on Monday with the court finding only five former high-ranking officials of the state apparatus guilty, mainly from the Fire Service, while acquitting those responsible for Civil Protection and local government officials, in a decision denounced as too lenient by victims’ relatives and public opinion.
The court, which adjudicated the case for more than 19 months into criminal acts and omissions related to their response to the fire, handed the maximum sentence, for misdemeanors, of five years’ imprisonment for the convicted former state officials. The sentence was eventually converted to a fine.
This means that the sentence for the five is equivalent to 38,000 euros each, while the elderly man who set the fire through criminal negligence was sentenced to three years in prison for involuntary arson, also with the alternative of paying a fine.
The prosecutor, Panagiotis Maniatis, had recommended guilt for nine of the 21 total defendants.
The unanimous decision has been derided by relatives of the victims and the injured for not adequately taking into account the criminal omissions and acts of the defendants. Tellingly, four of the five who were convicted were found guilty of manslaughter and causing bodily injuries by negligence – i.e. they were found guilty of misdemeanors, even though these were committed repeatedly.
Judges and prosecutors told Kathimerini the court may not have had the legal discretion to impose a sentence of more than five years, but nothing bound it not to convert the sentence imposed into money and to rule otherwise.
The decision will be evaluated in the coming days by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, whether there is a possibility of an appeal, while the risk of the statute of limitations remains active if the trial at the Court of Appeal is not held soon. However, the president of the Supreme Court, Ioanna Klapa, has called for the immediate legalization of the decision so that the trial in the Court of Appeal can take place immediately.
The five convicted people are Sotiris Terzoudis, then chief of the Fire Brigade, Vasilis Matthaiopoulos, then deputy chief of the Fire Brigade, Ioannis Fostieris, then commander of the Unified Coordination Center for Operations, Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos, head of the fire brigade at the fire, Haralambos Hionis, then commander of the Fire Department of East Attica, and Konstantinos Angelopoulos, the resident who started the fire.
