The ruling that will determine whether the two defendants are guilty of the horrific death of the college student Eleni Topaloudi they will leave the room Mixed Court of Appeal Whether they will once again be sentenced to life imprisonment, as they were in the first instance, or whether they will receive a more lenient sentence, will most likely be decided today.
The court is expected to issue its verdict this afternoon or this evening regarding the two men, who are roughly the same age as the 21-year-old student who They raped her, beating her savagely, to the country home of the oldest defendant, and then transported her alive and They were washed up on a rocky beach in the Lindos area of Rhodes.
The appellate judges and jurors are called upon to weigh the facts, the expert testimony and the evidence presented by the witnesses in the case, as well as the claims made by the two young defendants, and to decide what constitutes a just punishment for this double crime. A crime in which the two defendants have admitted to being present at the scenes—the house and the beach—and to the times when the crimes were committed.
The 24-year-old man from Rhodes and his 22-year-old co-defendant of Albanian descent, according to the indictment, acted together at every stage of the night that proved fatal for Eleni. They deny acting together, each claiming to have been a “passive bystander” who was simply present when the student was tortured and raped, blaming the other for both what happened initially inside the house and the final act of throwing the severely beaten 21-year-old into the sea.
In her closing argument at the previous hearing, the prosecutor asked the court to find both of them guilty as charged, emphasizing that both were equally involved in brutal sexual abuse both in the case of Eleni and in her transport, while she was in a comatose state, and her fall onto a rocky beach on Rhodes, where she died. He also requested that the court not hear at all the two defendants“ claims regarding the ”night of sex“ they had arranged with Eleni, emphasizing that the student that night ”had set out to go for souvlaki.”.
According to the prosecution’s motion, which the court will consider today, «despite Eleni’s resistance and by using physical force, the two defendants had sexual intercourse with her one after the other.» When the student told them she would report them, the murder took place: «The murder was committed by both of them in order to “silence” the girl. If one of them hadn’t wanted to, she would have called for help,» said the prosecutor, who emphasized that the court must not accept any arguments regarding psychological problems or diminished responsibility invoked by the defendant from Rhodes.
The proceedings began this morning with the conclusion of the closing arguments. .
