By Ioanna Mandrou

The Prosecutor of the Supreme Court, according to information, requested the immediate transmission of the decision from the Three-member Criminal Appeal Court of Thrace, in order to examine whether legal remedies should be exercised in the case of the defendants-residents of Evros, who last August (2023) , as self-appointed militiamen had engaged in acts of violence against refugees and immigrants, even publishing video footage of their actions, while they “arrested” immigrants in Evros and posted the relevant video on social networks.

The Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court requested the appellate decision in order to consider the possibility of an appeal against the decision of the Three-member Criminal Appeal Court of Thrace.
It is recalled that in the first ten days of July this year, three men were released who had been brought to trial on the charge that – amid the devastating fires in Evros, last September – they locked 13 refugees and migrants in a transport trailer, filming them, indicating them as arsonists.
The three-member Court of Criminal Appeals of Thrace decided to convert the basic criminal charge of robbery with racist characteristics into illegal detention, which is however prosecuted as a misdemeanor, accepting the allegations put forward by the defendants.
The appellants accepted that the specific act was not carried out with racial motives, while he acquitted them of a number of other misdemeanors, such as exposure, inciting to commit acts of violence, illegal carrying of weapons, etc.
In the end, they were sentenced to a total of 5 years in prison, for each of the three defendants, and an additional three months for the defendant who filmed the video in question (breach of personal data).

At the same time, the Three-member Court of Criminal Appeals, with its same decision, changed the sentence to a fine of 10 euros per day and granted a suspension of the execution of their sentence, until the Court of Appeal, i.e. no one went to prison

The prosecutor’s intervention last August

It is recalled that last August the Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court, for matters of racism, human trafficking and ill-treatment of nationals or foreigners, Giorgos Skiadaresis, after publications and complaints about illegal acts against refugees and immigrants in the area of ​​Evros, sent a relevant order both to the Prosecutor of First Instance Alexandroupolis as well as the Athens First Instance Prosecutor’s Office, attaching the relevant publications.

With his order, the public prosecutor had asked to investigate whether “specific criminal incidents have been committed, in which the application of the automatic procedure is clearly indicated, in order to eliminate any trace of the revival of the medieval phenomenon of self-justice that can expose our country internationally”.