A Greek court has ordered the imprisonment of three former Fire Department officers and the former head of Civil Protection, who were accused of criminal negligence in the Mati fire of 2018, which claimed the lives of 104 people.
Fire Department officers Sotiris Terzoudis, Vassilis Matthaiopoulos, Ioannis Fostieris, and the then general secretary of Civil Protection Ioannis Kapakis, were refused suspension or commutation of the sentences and were led to jail to start a 5-year sentence.
“For the 4 defendants, the sentence is imposed without suspension, without commutation as they are considered suspected of committing new offenses and we will justify our decision further,” said the presiding judge.
The judges found that these officials had contributed to the deaths and dozens of injuries that resulted from the fire that tore through the seaside town. Citizens were left helpless by authorities in the face of advancing flames.
The individuals were found guilty of multiple counts of homicide, resulting in bodily harm through negligence and numerous specific acts.
For the remaining defendants, the court decided to commute their sentences to ten euros per day.
The court also unanimously acquitted 11 defendants standing trial, including the former Attica region governor Rena Dourou and the then mayors of Marathonas, Rafina-Pikermi, and Penteli. Based on the court’s decision, there was no evidence of possible intent that could support the offense of endangerment to a criminal degree.
The Court of Appeal’s decision puts an end to the criminal assessment of the tragedy. For 11 months, 21 defendants were on trial for the hundreds of deaths and injuries caused by the fire in the summer of 2018.
It has been almost seven years since the devastating fires of July 23, 2018 at the seaside Athens resort of Mati that left the nation plagued by unforgettable and horrifying images and accounts of the incident. That day’s fear and devastation still haunt the people of Greece.
As photos and footage from that day re-emerge in the media and the posts of victim’s relatives and friends again flood social media, a resounding “WHY” still looms unanswered. The Mati fire was the worst of a series of wildfires in Greece that began in the coastal areas of Attica in July 2018.
Over 700 residents were evacuated or rescued, mainly from the seaside settlements located north of the port town of Rafina, namely Kokkino Limanaki and Mati, where rescuers found 26 corpses trapped just meters away from the sea, apparently hugging each other as they died. Boats also recovered corpses from the water and rescued hundreds of people from beaches and the sea.
The fires were, at that time, the second-deadliest wildfire event in the 21st century, following the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Australia that killed 173.
