The trial for the fatal fire in Mati-Sto begins today at the Three-member Criminal Court, with 21 people on the bench

Shortly before 5 pm on July 23, 2018 fire put by an old man to burn dry grasses in his field, in the area of ​​Dau Pentelis, got out of his control. The two hours that followed, as strong winds were blowing in the area, were enough for the fire to descend from the slopes of Mount Pentelikos, burn everything in its path and end up in the sea. After 6 pm, the fire for clearing the field had turned into a tragedy, while in the following hours “the fire in Mati” had it is already ranked as one of the deadliest in the world.

This morning the havoc that happened in Mati will be revived before the 6th Three-Member Court of Misdemeanors, which four years later, is called to try 21 defendants, then responsible for services and institutions, for responsibilities attributed to them for what happened and what was not done before, during and after the fire that left behind 102 dead, dozens injured and massive destruction.

They will sit on the bench the former regional governor of Attica Rena Dourou, the then mayors of the region, the former general secretary of Civil Protection and officers of the Service, high-ranking officers of the Fire Brigade and EMAK, as well as the private individual who caused the fire to start, who is charged with arson by negligence. The defendants will be tried on a case-by-case basis for the offenses of serial negligent homicide by omission by obligees and non-obligors, as well as serial bodily harm by omission.

In the court the victims of the deadly fire will also come today, the people whose relatives were lost in martyrdom, who were seriously injured themselves or members of their families, some of them with serious problems from the burns they suffered. People who for a number of years have been trying to stand on their feet and expect justice to find if and who are responsible for what happened, for the losses, for their long suffering, for each of the tragedies that make up what is collectively called “tragedy in the eye”.

For the case a months-long interrogation was conducted at the end of which the Investigator requested that the charge be upgraded to a felony for certain defendants. His position was adopted by the members of the Council of Misdemeanors with a resolution they issued. The matter was decided definitively by the Appeals Council which, adopting a similar prosecutorial proposal, rejected the upgrade to a felony and issued last June a will that orders 21 of the 23 defendants to be tried for misdemeanors. The appellants acquitted three accused police officers who had been charged, finding that they had given sufficient explanations for their actions.

The accountants are facing an indictment, which, based on the responsibilities they had at the time in question, imputes unpreparedness, wrong estimates for the danger of the situation, non-immediate intervention using every means to deal with the fire when it starts, delayed mobilization both at the level of prevention and at the level of reducing the consequences of the large fire with the timely evacuation of settlements and the declaration of the area in a state of emergency of need to rescue citizens in need. Piles of evidence collected during the investigation and which will be studied by the court, show a picture of chaos and confusion that prevailed in the critical hours between the services that had the responsibility to coordinate the situation in order to limit the consequences of the fire.

The persons of the trial and its “housing”.

The case of the deadly fire in Mati is another multi-person trial for the conduct of which requires courtrooms with special specifications which Athens, the country’s largest judicial district, does not have.

The trial with the 21 defendants concerns 102 victims of negligent homicide and 32 victims of negligent physical injury. 213 persons have been called prosecution witnesses, while there will be dozens of witnesses who will be called by the defendants to defend them. To these numbers should be added the advocates of the victims and the accused, as well as the journalists who will cover the trial of the case. Space is also required for the case file, which includes tens of thousands of pages of documents and other material that take up a room.

For the “housing” of the trial, the proposal of the new Administration of the Court of First Instance to make available the Ceremonial Hall of the Court of Appeal was rejected by the Ministry of Justice as the project was deemed “difficult”, due to the Golden Dawn trial being held there. So I concededwith one room in the courts of the former Evelpidon school (building 9 room 12) for the start of the trial, particularly small for the facts of the case. “Provisions will be made to facilitate as much as possible the access of all the actors of the trial to the above room”, says in a related announcement the president of the Tripartite Division of the Court of First Instance Christoforos Linos, who informs that the next meetings of the court will be held “in room 3 of building 13 of the Former Evelpidon School, which within the current week will have been properly arranged, with the addition of additional cushions for the advocates, seats for the witnesses, as well as microphones”. At the same time, the Court of First Instance will already today have placed the case file in an area adjacent to the hall of building 13, where the trial will be transferred in the coming days.

The trial is expected that will last for several months with the statute of limitations (2026) getting closer and closer.

RES-EMP

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