With today’s unanimous decision, the Three-member Misdemeanor Court of Athens declared Rena Dourou innocent in the case of the tragedy in Mati.

R. Dourou stated in this regard:

“Today the court unanimously found me not guilty of the tragedy in Mati. It should be noted that there was an acquittal proposal by Mr. Prosecutor and also an acquittal decision by the Disciplinary Council for elected officials, which consists of Supreme and Senior Judges, i.e. all the Judges who judged me on a disciplinary and criminal level unanimously acquitted me.

In an unimaginable tragedy, even if it is now proven that I had no involvement, even if I was unjustly expelled, my inner core of values ​​does not allow me to rejoice in my final vindication. Because the injustice suffered by the victims and their relatives outweighs the injustice suffered by me. As a political person, one more reason for this morality to overcome the feeling even of any momentary personal satisfaction.

I know that never and nothing, no process can turn back time, heal the wounds, erase the event that deeply marked my own life. And for that we must all express our dismay.

I was the main target of my political opponents in a national tragedy of enormous proportions, who attempted my political, moral and physical extermination. I was slandered and slandered like no one else.

My political opponents have never been able to accept that a young, left-wing woman accomplished, during her tenure, with unprecedented transparency, a huge work in all areas.

1,250 projects with a budget of over 2.7 billion were launched in every corner of Attica. I specifically mention the regeneration of the Falirikos bay, which has since remained as we delivered it, the water supply pipeline of Aegina, the action “power for all” (in the period of the memorandum restrictions), the first reinforcement of the NHS with equipment for the public hospitals of Attica which proved to be of critical importance when it came time to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the recruitment in the health centers and many more which even today our political opponents hide that they were implemented by the Life Force Administration in the Attica Region.

All this work in the local communities of Attica, for the establishment of any kind, had to be a parenthesis that will not be repeated. So they sought at all costs the means to hurt, tarnishing my work. And they found it in the tragedy of the Eye.

Ignoring the institutional framework, ignoring the facts – more correctly, distorting them – falsifying them to the maximum with slanders, against common sense and international experience, violating even the presumption of innocence, they pointed the finger at me and dragged me around the Panhellenic as responsible for of tragedy, setting up teletrials, exploiting the pain of our fellow citizens.

Characteristic of the vulgarity and distortion is the fact that days after the national tragedy I gave an interview in which I point out precisely that those in a position of responsibility should not consider that they have gone wrong in their shift, so bend over backwards to see that such a disaster does not happen again .

So while the grammatical and substantive wording is that this is a national tragedy, they twisted the meaning, extracted the phrase, cut corners and tried to make me appear as insensitive, painless for reducing the tragedy to something simple and ordinary.

And this although they knew very well that common sense, international experience and the institutional framework define that the Fire Department has the absolute responsibility of extinguishing forest fires and rescuing citizens. That the elected Region (2nd degree T.A.) had and has a purely auxiliary role and in fact with responsibilities which it does not exercise voluntarily but only if and as long as the Fire Department requests it. Despite the fact that, as the Region of Attica, we responded to our role and did everything the Fire Department asked of us, a huge communication effort was made to manipulate the “public sense of justice” with the aim of being considered guilty.

I firmly believe that in order to guard the credibility of our political system, in the event that we or the body of which we are political leaders, is involved even invisibly in a case harmful to the citizens and even the slightest shadows of guilt are created, the only way is to seize the physical judges. If they judge that we are innocent, let us be white in society, if we are guilty, let us be punished like all citizens.

Therefore, the fortification behind parliamentary immunities does not suit politicians who want to act with dignity and respect for the citizens. The entire criminal process is sacred for all sides who want to find their right, but it is still soul-destroying. I endured it without whining, without shouting and screaming about “political persecution”, with patience and determination, fully respecting the rules of the rule of law.

I do not ask for an apology from those, the moral perpetrators of my persecution, who trampled on every presumption of innocence, pointed the finger at me as guilty and even called for my physical extermination. Whether and how they will react now is their matter and they will be judged, like all of us, by the citizens. What I cannot forgive them for is that my mother recently passed away in misery, that her daughter was dragged across the country as the cause of the tragedy.

To the many and many who believed in me, lovingly supported me and stood by me from the first moment, apart from the huge thanks I owe them, I want to assure them that the unfair blows not only did not bend me, on the contrary they steeled me so that continue to fight to make our homeland the country we deserve”.