Ten days before the court’s decision on the tragedy in Mati, one of the accused senior officers of the fire department was sentenced today in the first degree, for a case concerning evidence that had been provided to the prosecutors who investigated the causes of the deadly fire.

The three-member misdemeanor court today sentenced the then commander of the Operations Coordination Center, Ioannis Fostieris, to a 2-year suspended prison sentence for the charge of submitting false information to the public prosecutor’s authorities, a case that reached the Court of Justice following a complaint by the Fire Department officer Ioannis Kostas.

The complaint by the then commander of the 12th Police of Athens, deputy fire chief Ioannis Kostas, concerns the elements of the Engage system, the software that records the location and movement of firefighting vehicles, which, according to the complainant, were inaccurate with the aim of misleading the authorities. The officer had filed a lawsuit against Mr. Fostieris, who was convicted today, but also against the then commander of 199, Christos Golfinos, also accused in the trial for Mati, whom the court acquitted today judging that no evidence against him had emerged.

Mr. Kostas had referred to the case of the disputed software elements, crucial for the movements of the fire brigade vehicles on the day the fire consumed Mati, leaving behind 104 dead, in the testimony he gave to the court about the tragedy. As he had said in his deposition at the time, when he had looked up data to prepare a Fire Report, he found that there was inaccurate data in the Engage system. The officer testified that he asked his superiors to inform the prosecutor’s office about this, as the investigation into the tragedy was ongoing at the time, but he had not been heard. So he appealed himself and informed the judicial expert Dimitris Liotsios about the matter.