A 24-year-old girl was found in the courtrooms of Volos, with a collar and her face disfigured by the wild wood, which she received from her 50-year-old father, because she decided to convert to Islam.

She herself, who has studied biomedicine, works in a medical research laboratory at a university in Great Britain where she studied. She returned from England last Saturday to spend a few days with her parents and 13-year-old brother.

As she said, she had informed her parents by phone for her decision to convert to Islam. They had reacted strongly on the phone, they had warned her not to come to Greece, but when the spirits calmed down she came to see them.

When her father he saw her with a scarf when he went to pick her up from the bus station in Volos, he started the attack. “You discredit us everywhere” he told her and she replied that he had the privilege of discrediting his family and herself for many years. When they got home, the arguments didn’t stop, while on Sunday, the family was waiting for relatives at home. The 25-year-old, wearing her headscarf, decided to stay in her room and her father was enraged. He started punching her, knocking her down and kicking her in the ribs. When her mother stepped in to save her from his grasp, he hit her.

“He beat me for 20 minutes with animalistic joy because she didn’t want to wear a headscarf,” she testified in court, and her father was crying and apologizing. The District Attorney Mrs. Papakosta, initially defending the self-evident right of every person to believe in whatever god they want, was a catapult against the 50-year-old farmer for the abuse, with her proposal to send him to prison.

What the mother testified

“He told me that he was going to kill me first and then the child,” stated the mother in her testimony, who went and asked for help from the neighbors. “You have taken the path of the devil” the father shouted at his 24-year-old bloodied daughter, while he himself is an atheist, but observes the customs of the Christian community where he lives.
The mother admitted that her husband he is violent and beats her and the children.

The 24-year-old originally from Albania, was born in a village of Velestinos and was baptized a Christian.
“At home, he shouted that Muslims are sick and left no room for me to explain to him that it is my right to search, research religions and make decisions. I am against the appearance of naked parts of the body,” she said and stated that many times she and her family are victims of her father’s violence and many times they have been afraid that he will carry out his threat, i.e. kill them .
“He beat me mercilessly. He was not moved, he did not regret. I was calling for help and while he beat me he had an animalistic joy in his eyes. I had promised myself that if he hit me again I would report him,” he said. As long as she was testifying, her father, who appeared without a lawyer, like the 24-year-old, said he was remorseful and apologized, while the 13-year-old child of the family watched the process.
“I consider my father dangerous,” said the 24-year-old and she refused when the prosecutor proposed to her to accept a criminal mediation procedure.
The 50-year-old in his testimony, he hinted that he has been fighting for his children for so many years and is struggling with little money to make ends meet, thinking that everyone should obey his orders because he supports them. In fact, he said about his daughter that while he knew he had no money to study her, she did whatever she wanted.
“Everything happened on my nerves because I also have a heavy hand. I won’t touch a hair of their hair again, I won’t hurt a fly,” he said apologetically, with the Prosecutor telling him that he should have been in the defendant’s position many years ago.
“Go back and see your daughter, you could have killed her. Because you give them, as you think, a plate of fay, will you make their life a torture?”, said the Prosecutor addressing the defendant.

He characterized him as a violent man, without moral barriers and without love for his family. The Prosecutor and the two courts of the seat sentenced him to three years and three months without suspension and without the appeal having a suspensory effect, while the president of the seat was in favor of suspending the sentence. The 50-year-old was crying and apologizing until the police took him to the detention center to be transferred to prison.