It was murder.

Anyone who’s seen the chilling video – it looks like it could have come right out of Mississippi Burning or the U.S. south in the 1950’s or 1960’s with a gang  of KKK cowards chasing a black man – could come to no other conclusion.

Except in Greece.

Bakari Henderson, a vibrant black man from Texas, was 24 in 2017 when he was run down by a mob of thugs on the thug island of Zakynthos because they didn’t like a waitress taking a selfie photo with him.

They chased him through the streets and beat and stomped him to death – on video – and got away with it because, eh, this is Greece, where political embezzlers get out of prison for having a headache, convicted criminals aren’t always named, and two journalists covering corruption were killed.

Prime Minister Kyriakos ‘Blue Blood’ Mitsotakis doesn’t care, even though U.S. Vice-President Kamala ‘The Invisible Woman’ Harris made a phony gesture to him to look into why there was only American-style southern justice for Henderson, which means none.

She did nothing, Mitsotakis did nothing and U.S. President Joe ‘Rip Van Winkle’ did nothing because he’s been asleep for 20 years and will awaken just in time to shake the hand of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who the CIA said ordered the slaughter of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who lived in Virginia.

If the United States didn’t care about Henderson, why should Greece? The tourists are pouring back in again during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mitsotakis allowing the anti-vaxxers a big win and mixing with the vaccinated, and money is rolling in.

Foreign visitors are being gouged, especially on the island of Scamos AKA Mykonos, taxi drivers are ripping them off, and nobody cares about an American tourist who was murdered, least of all on Bloody Zakynthos.

In a first trial, only one defendant was convicted, but the charge of homicide reduced to fatal bodily harm, no one apparently understanding that fatal means death, which is a lot worse than bodily harm.

After that – Greece has no double jeopardy laws – a prosecutor tried the killer gang again with the same sad, predictable result, cheered by the conscienceless defense lawyers Alexis Kougias, Agamemnon Tatsis, and Athanassios Tartis whose souls are stained forever – for money.

A Greek court – hearing an appeal against leniency for the killers – said it wasn’t murder. That was upheld in the appeal by a split verdict, ruling out murder despite video and eyewitness evidence showing the victim beaten to death by a gang of Serbians and a Briton of Bosnian descent.

In a report on the appeal, The New York Times – noting his parents were in the court – said the decision means the sentences were left unchanged for five of those convicted, who had already been freed after serving time for the lesser verdict. The sixth will also be freed because … this is Greece.

Nine men who were implicated in the attack went on trial for murder in 2018 but three were cleared, although the prosecutor, Giorgos Bisbikis, persuaded judges to retry the six convicted defendants on the original murder charges.

A mixed appeals court of three judges and four jurors upheld the initial assault charges by a vote of 4-3, with two judges – including the court President – wanting a murder conviction, the paper said.

“Bakari Henderson came to our country as a tourist,” the family’s lawyer, Christos Kaklamanis, said after sentencing. “For the second time, our system of justice betrayed him,” he said, adding that the decision “gives the message that other such acts of violence can be forgiven.”

He called the decision, “a sad day for Greek justice” after Henderson’s parents repeatedly returned to the country, his mother saying they were “extremely disheartened” with the verdict, the court giving no reason for the leniency in the face of the evidence.

“Unfortunately, it appears that the majority sympathized with the defendants as opposed to our son, a Black American,” she said, adding that the family would take the case to Greece’s Supreme Court.

The case had already been moved to the back pages because the COVID-19 pandemic came along and the murder – it was murder – of a young black man in a country notorious for racism and justice didn’t matter anymore.

The men who killed him will be free to go out and drink and try to pick up waitresses and taunt others because they essentially suffered nothing and Henderson is still dead.

The appeal to the Supreme Court is futile and means the family will, for a third time, face the heartbreak of again seeing no justice, although this time they can expect the disappointment so they won’t feel cheated.

Quoting from the Bible, they added that we will continue to stand with and trust in God for favor believing he will grant us the desires of our hearts, which is to see justice for Bakari served.”

“We were so, so proud of him,” Bakari’s father, Phil Henderson, told PEOPLE in February. “He had just recently graduated, we sent him off to Greece and he came back home, dead in a box, a week later.”

But the anger has gone out of this case for everyone else. There’s no justice.