The First Instance Criminal Court in Athens sentenced Dionysis Liakopoulos and Christos Stergiopoulos to life imprisonment for the cold-blooded murder of a 27-year-old Pakistani migrant worker, Sehzad Luqman, in Petralona, Athens, last year.
The two men are also involved in the criminal case against Golden Dawn. According to the court, there was no mitigating factor, and the judge come to the conclusion that their motive was cultural diversity.
The court unanimously found both men guilty of the murder of the 27-year-old legal immigrant, adopting the prosecutor’s proposal to convict them.
The judges and jury rejected the accused’s claims that the victim had blocked their way with his bicycle on January 17, 2013 when the 27-year-old was killed.
The prosecutor, in her proposal considered whether the crime was motivated by racism, the first time Greek courts have ever debated this issue.
The defendants’ lawyers asked the court to declare them not guilty for intentional homicide, but for inflicting fatal injuries. They also stressed that the two young men had no intention to kill the victim.
On the other hand, the prosecution, representing the parents of the 27-year-old Pakistani, asked for the defendants to be convicted for a crime that they consciously committed because of racist motives.
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