A six-month jail sentence, convertible to ten euros per day, was imposed by the Thessaloniki Autonomous Single-Member Plenary Court on a 50-year-old man who used violence on his ex-wife because she accused him of stealing money from her purse.

The defendant was found guilty of attempted domestic assault and acquitted of the charge of insult. According to the indictment, it all happened on July 25 inside the house where the former couple lives with their two adult children. The occasion was a verbal confrontation which started when the woman realised that five euros were missing from her purse.

“I had 25 euros in my wallet, a 20-euro note and a five-euro note. I asked him to bring me cigarettes and when I opened to give him the money there was no tally. I thought the only one who would have taken it was him, there was no one else in the house,” the woman testified, who explained that she started calling him a thief.

“It obviously bothered him that I called him a thief. I had my wallet open and I was showing it to him. Then he called me a ‘wh…e’ and I grabbed him by the shirt and ripped it off. He pushed me by the chest – up high, but he didn’t try to choke me,” the woman told the court, although she had said in her statement to the police that her ex-husband had grabbed her tightly by the neck with his hands.

The police were alerted by the ex-couple’s 26-year-old son, who was informed by his mother by phone about the incident while he was at work and immediately called the Emergency Operations Centre. “I didn’t want to call the police, it was too much for our son. He wanted to push me away not hit me,” the woman stressed.

In his apology, the accused denied the charge against him, claiming that he pushed the woman to push her away and defuse the situation.

“I am 120 pounds and fit. I didn’t grab her by the throat. I don’t remember that. There are no incidents of violence, just verbal tensions between us,” he said.