Two get 11 years for stealing OSE cables

A court in Lamia, central Greece, on Friday passed down 11-year jail sentences to two men, a Pakistani and a Bulgarian, found guilty of stealing several hundred meters of electric cabling from the section of railway between Thebes and Livadia.

The court heard that the pair, who were arrested in August 2010, operated with the help of a team of foreign nationals to remove the cabling before selling it to scrapyards.

According to the testimony of officials of the Hellenic Railways Organization (OSE), the removal of the cabling essentially put a 160-kilometer section of the railway out of service.