The perpetrators of one of the most heinous crimes ever committed in Greek football have been sentenced to defiantly low sentences. It was the murder of Kostas Katsoulis, a friend of his National Piraeus, who was killed by his fans Herodotus in September 2014 at the stadium of Nea Alikarnassos in Heraklion during a game between the two teams. Kostas Katsoulis had attempted to protect other fans of Ethnikos who had been attacked and was beaten with sticks and sticks for a long time by a group of people.
The Joint Court of Justice which tried the case at second instance found the three defendants guilty as charged (fatal bodily harm), but granted them the extenuating circumstances of previous lawful life and that of good behaviour after the crime, which led to absurdly short sentences, 7 years for one defendant and 6 years for the other two. The corresponding sentences at first instance were 13 and 12 years respectively.
It is worth noting that both extenuating circumstances are completely unjustified, the one of previous legal life because these are people who organized constant incidents - and by continuing one of them they murdered Katsoulis -, while after the crime they did everything they could to hinder the work of the authorities and to make the evidence disappear. In fact, according to complaints from the family of the murdered man, in the attempt to cover up the crime, various actors of the city of Heraklion took the lead, while the initial forensic report stated the cause of death as a ... aneurysm in the brain.
From the family's side, specific complaints have been made about the current Deputy Minister of Sports - and then just a member of the New Democracy's Heraklion Parliament - Lefteris Avgenakis, who from the beginning mobilized on the side of the killers., while he had attended the side of Herodotus' agents during their apology to the Hellenic Football Federation and had asked a question in Parliament (!) asking for the 15 points that had been taken away from the league because of the murder to be returned to the team.
This is the very same Avgenakis who a few days ago announced draconian - and largely exaggerated - measures to combat fan violence, which provide for imprisonment without parole even for someone who threw a plastic bottle on a football field.
The murderers of Kostas Katsoulis have served almost 2 years of imprisonment -interrupted- and if there is no prosecutorial appeal for extenuating circumstances, they will be finally free in a few months.
