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> Greece

Mati trial about the devastating fire of 2018 : “It is the second biggest tragedy in the world”, said the prosecutor

What the prosecutor Panagiotis Maniatis said

Newsroom February 13 05:22

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“We are approaching the end of a trial that concerns a major event that determined the history of our country,” said today, beginning his speech in the trial for Mati, the prosecutor of the court Panagiotis Maniatis, describing the disaster in East Attica in July 2018 as the second largest tragedy in the world.

“It is not an exaggeration to say that in many things of fire protection we should talk about the period before 23.7.2018 and after. Mati was the second biggest tragedy globally.

The event was completed within two hours.

The difference between all the previous cases and the case under consideration is that in Mati we experienced an event of a short duration, but which caused more than 100 people being burned to their death ,” the prosecutor said at the beginning of his speech and continued: “The most important was the protection of human life.

Your court has the task of answering the question of what happened that day in East Attica. What and who was to blame. It is a difficult process.”

Maniatis said the investigation into responsibility for the deadly fire in Mati started with more defendants eventually 21 people are on trial who, he noted, deserve to have a fair trial. “We arrived here after 15 months of hearings, dozens of witnesses who came here were examined.

I believe that any good-faith observer would have found that painstaking efforts were made to uncover the truth in a difficult case like this. Through a voluminous dossier and a mass of evidence and not always in ideal circumstances.

The aim has always been to have a fair trial” said the prosecutor , who then gave a brief account of the events of that day, including the following: “The fire started at 16:41 in an uncovered area.

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It was witnessed by video footage from an adjacent house. The first report was made by volunteer forest firefighters at 16:46 and mobilisation followed.

In terms of weather conditions, the risk index was 4 very high. At 16:41 the wind was strong westerly up to 9 Bofort. The fire spread rapidly and grew in size.”

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