“There were too many people in black shirts above me. I saw that they held shackles and sticks in their hands and beat me with them and kicked me. Irons and firewood fell on me, and everyone who did not have them beat me with their feet and fists. There were fifteen people there and I was sleeping.”

These are the words of Abuzid Ebarak, who today opened his testimony before the five-member Criminal Court of Appeal about the brutal attack he and three other Egyptian fishermen were subjected to by the Golden Dawn Assault Battalion on 12 June. , 2012, in the house where they lived in Icon of Perama. An attack that, according to a fisherman, was carried out “because we are foreigners.”

The first witness and victim of the attack testified that he experienced at 3 am while sleeping on the roof of a house he shared with other compatriots when he was severely beaten by a group of black-clad men with iron bars and wooden poles. The victim fled because, he said, the gold collectors thought they had killed him. However, he was very seriously wounded in the jaw, head and torso, received a lung contusion and required hospitalization and a number of operations.

As the witness said, “That night I slept on the roof because it was very hot and there were mosquitoes, and I did it when it was hot… I slept on the roof as usual. Around 2-3 o’clock I felt blows on my legs… My jaw broke in three places. When I was hit, I felt dead. I heard, as if in a dream, the word “let’s go” and they ran away from me, knowing that I almost died. When I came to, I realized that I was in an ambulance. I came to myself when I was in the hospital, but I don’t know what time it is. I had broken teeth, twelve stitches in my head, three broken jaws. I was in a very bad condition from head to toe. When I came to my senses, I told my friends that I wanted to go and die in Egypt, next to my children.”

Rybak described the operations performed and said that his friends signed for him to enter surgery. “I had my teeth pulled out. I don’t remember how long the operation took. I came to my senses and saw that I had an operation on my neck, as if I were a chicken that was slaughtered with a knife. I have three pieces of iron in my mouth.

Asked by President Abuzid, Ebarak said that all the people who beat him were wearing black.