The day before the murder fire in Mati with the centenary of death, criminal inaction began, leading to an unprecedented tragedy, according to Dimitrios Liotsioswho, on behalf of the judge, wrote an expert opinion and is currently being considered in court.

An expert firefighter who testified yesterday, on the second day of the trial of those responsible for the incredible disaster, said that from the previous day, given the forecast of dangerous weather events in Attica, the authorities of the Unified Operational Coordination Center (ESCO) to order the redeployment of aircraft in the pool, as is always done in such cases. According to the testimony of Mr. Liotsios, aerial surveillance was not envisaged, despite the fact that the fire forecast for Attica was number 4 on the corresponding scale.

Cannery available

The result, as the expert pointed out, of this criminal omission was that the next day, July 23, when two fires broke out in Attica, one in Kineta and one in Mati, only one firefighting aircraft was available. for the Eye, who alone could not handle the size of the fire.

Mr. Liotsios argued, referring to the data of his expert opinion, that if there were three planes, then the fire in Mati would certainly be put an end to, however, as he noted, it would not have such deadly results. The expert, whose expertise is being monitored in court by dozens of victims of fires and relatives of the victims, also yesterday came to the criminal omissions of the authorities on the day of the fatal fire.

vigil is late

As he argued, it was necessary to declare a general alarm from noon that day, and in particular, when the evacuation of Kineta began, where the fire was raging, since Attica was in red from the previous day and with a danger level of four. Instead, as he pointed out, a general alarm was declared on the afternoon of July 23, when the fire that started from Dau Pentelis had already hit the houses in Mati and began its destructive work.

“At 13:30,” Mr. Liotsios stressed, “it was necessary to give a general alarm order, as the evacuation of the inhabitants of Kineta began. At 17.30, when the order for general alarm was given … In less than an hour, no one will have time to be on duty. At 7 o’clock the fire had already reached the sea. The services of Attica were to be on alert and all vehicles were to be guarded.”

His testimony, which is expected to continue for several more sessions of the court, since the expert opinion is a very important part of the indictment, yesterday provoked a reaction from the lawyers of some of the defendants, who asked the court that Dimitrios Liotios testify only as an expert, and not as a witness, that is, to strictly limit himself to what he wrote in the expert opinion and not to give judgments in response to questions from the court.

This position provoked a strong reaction from the relatives of the victims present, as well as their lawyers, with the lawyer Vassilios Capernaros, addressing the court, saying: “The best witness is the one who helps to establish the truth. If they didn’t like the expertise, they could challenge it and ask for Mr. Liotsiou’s expulsion. They will come today, after he testified 37 times as a witness during interrogation, to say that he is not a witness…”.

The court, when asked how Dimitrios Liotsios should testify, decided that he was being interrogated both as an expert and as a witness, having read his notes.

However, in the trial for the Eye, where the pain of loss overflows, where people find themselves in life with deep wounds from pain and most of them, as they testified, live to live, anger also dominates, because they were left unprotected, but also because then they were faced with the worst demonstration of a cover-up, and only a few of those who were really guilty of the tragedy sat in the dock.