Mandra: Three Guilty of Murderous Floods by Court of Appeal

Guilty were the former mayor, then head of Elefsina town planning and the then employee of the district, responsible for the policing of the streams, from the Three-member Athens Criminal Court, for the case of the killings in the area in 2017. Similar to the court’s decision was the prosecutor’s proposal for flooding in Mandra. The court in its reasoning, among other things, said Mandra was an unsanctioned city, a wilderness of natural destruction, the rainfall that was the main cause of the phenomenon. Among other things, President Argyro Nikolakoudis said that the weather service and the General Secretariat of Civil Protection had to inform citizens earlier about the rainstorm expected. At the same time, police and traffic failed to take the necessary measures to protect citizens on the road. The court sentenced the three defendants on the charge of flooding by negligence, omission while finding them innocent of the charges of manslaughter by negligence and physical harm by negligence. “There were no deaths and injuries associated with arbitrary structures in the Sures stream,” the president stressed on the court’s reasoning. With the adoption of the decision on guilt, the lawyers of the families of the victims Athanasios Economou, Athanasios Kavourinos, Konstantinos Fousas and Dimitrios Skyptas, proceeded with the following announcement: “The Trimeles Court of Defects of Athens announced its decision to flood Mandra in 2017 that we mourned 25 victims today ruled that there is no criminal responsibility for tragic deaths but only for causing flooding locally, just as it happened 10 days ago in the trial of the flood phenomenon of Janos in Larissa. People’s deaths in Mandra were not an accident nor “the bad time”. The relatives of the victims do not agree with the court decision will exhaust any legal means and aid in order to overturn this wrong and unjust decision to justify the souls of the people lost.” The first court had acquitted 13 defendants including former district chief of Attica, Rena Duru while having sentenced eight persons to prison sentences up to six years, redeemable.