Mati fire trial: mitigation refused for three convicts; victims’ families welcome it as an ‘important message’

The three-member misdemeanor Court of Appeal on Tuesday rejected requests for mitigation, on grounds of a previously clean life, for the three convicts of the devastating Mati fire — as protothema.gr reports. They are former Fire Service chief Sotiris Terzoudis, former deputy chief Vasilis Matthaiopoulos, and former Civil Protection secretary general Ioannis Kapakis.

According to protothema.gr, their guilt had been definitively established by Areios Pagos, Greece’s Supreme Court; the retrial that concluded with today’s decision concerned only the question of sentence mitigation, not guilt.

The association of relatives of the victims of the July 23, 2018 fire welcomed the decision as “an important message for tomorrow too,” stressing that it concerns the accountability of institutional power in the face of such tragedies.

The Mati fire, in which 120 people lost their lives and 57 others suffered permanent injuries, remains one of the gravest wounds of modern Greece. The victims’ families have for years demanded that those institutionally responsible bear full accountability and not benefit from mitigations that would dilute the gravity of the sentence.