Court passes guilty verdicts in Walid Talb 2012 torture trial

A court in Piraeus on Monday handed guilty verdicts to four defendants accused of kidnapping and torturing Walid Talb, the Egyptian worker who made headlines after he was found in November 2012 by passersby on the island of Salamina, collapsed by a tree after escaping his captors, with a broken chain around his neck and with evident signs of abuse.

Talb had accused his employer, his employer’s son and two accomplices of holding him against his will and abusing him mentally, physically and sexually over the course of several days after the Egyptian worker had demanded that he be paid several months’ worth of overdue wages.

The Piraeus court sentenced the owner of the bakery and Talb’s employer, Giorgos Sgoudras, to 13 years in prison, and his son, Stamatis Sgourdas – who was a teenager at the time and thus received a more lenient sentence – to five years with parole. The two accomplices, Giorgos Zahcariadis and Frederic Zoto, were convicted to 10 and nine years respectively.

The decision upholds a previous ruling from the Piraeus Felonies Court.

“Justice has been done and the sentences correspond to the gravity of the acts,” Talb’s lawyer, Vassilis Papastergiou, told the media after leaving the courtroom.

Talb was 29 years old at the time of the attack and still suffers from physical and psychological problems as a result of the abuse.