By Ioanna Mandrou

With strong disapproval the decision of the Court on the fatal fire in Mati was accepted, as they were found guilty only five, at that time, Fire Department officials and Ioannis Fostieris who was the head of the Coordination Center.

All five were found guilty of manslaughter and serial bodily harm by negligence, while the elderly Konstantinos Angelopoulos who started the fire was also found guilty.

Particularly:

The court found him guilty Sotiris Terzoudis then Fire Chief (negligent homicide and negligent personal injury for helicopter diversion) for 102 homicides (casualties) and 32 personal injuries (burns); Vasilis Matthaiopoulos then vice-captain (manslaughter for the death of 9 people at sea because he found him guilty of not giving an order to move the ships to save those who fell into the sea to be saved, Ioannis Fostieris then head of ESKE (homicide by negligence) for 102 deaths and 32 injuries, Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos then Commander of the Athens Fire Services (negligent homicide for 102 people, negligent bodily harm for 32 people), Charalambo Chioni then Commander of Eastern Attica Fire Services (manslaughter by negligence for 102 people, physical injury by negligence of 32 people) and Konstantinos Angelopoulos resident from whose yard the fire started.

Firefighters Christos Golfinos, Filippos Pandeleakos, Damianos Papadopoulos, Christos Drosopoulos, Georgios Portozoudis and Stefanos Kolokouris, the then officer in the Aerial Media of ELAS Charalambos Syrogiannis, the then general secretary of Civil Protection Ioannis Kapaki were found not guilty s, the then regional governor Attica Rena Dourou and the then mayors of Marathon Ilias Psinakis and Pentelis Dimitrios-Stergios Kapsalis.

Vaios Thanasias, then deputy mayor of the municipality of Marathon, Evangelos Bournos, then mayor of Rafina-Pikermio, Antonis Palpatzi, then deputy mayor of Rafina-Pikermio, were found not guilty, despite the prosecutor’s proposal to the contrary.

Relatives of the victims erupted in loud disapproval against the court, while there were not a few who addressed the judges with insults for the decision that caused a shock as it moved below the prosecutor’s proposal.

“Maybe the court did its job well, I don’t know, but what is certain is that the sequence of responsibilities as they are distributed and analyzed obviously leaves us with the fact that what should have been done was not done…” the Minister of the Interior commented on SKAI and the show Today Makis Voridis.