High court probes light sentences in migrant abduction case
The Supreme Court Prosecutor’s office has demanded to see the decision of an appeals court that imposed light sentences on three vigilantes who, posing as militia members, detained 13 migrants last year, accusing them of starting a major wildfire.
The three-member criminal appeals court in the northeastern region of Evros sentenced each of the three vigilantes to five years in prison. One of them, who taped the migrants’ “arrest” and lockup in a trailer and uploaded the video, got an additional three months for violating the migrants’ privacy.
But all three got off free by paying €10 for each day of detention. Initially charged with abduction with a racist motive, a felony, they were finally found guilty of illegal detention, a misdemeanor, and acquitted of other charges, including incitement to violence and illegal possession of weapons.
The move by the Supreme Court Prosecutor’s Office to demand the case file is preliminary to the high court’s likely quashing the sentence and ordering another trial, on the original charges.
The three had been prosecuted last year only after their deed became widely known and an Athens prosecutor ordered their arrest, noting, among other things, that the “medieval practice of vigilantism” must be eradicated.
Evros, also the name of the river separating Greece and Turkey, is a flashpoint for the crossing of undocumented migrants into the EU.
