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General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
ATHENS – Three men who locked 13 refugees in a van during deadly 2023 fires in northern Greece and called on people to “round up” more – posting it in a social media video – were released from detention because a court said it wasn’t racist.
They were not identified but had been held since September, 2023 after the incident that drew outrage and as they were awaiting trial before the Thrace Criminal Court of Appeal which reduced their charges to a misdemeanor.
The locking up of the refugees came at a time when Greece was being swept by wildfires and the three accused said those they rounded up were arsonists but had no proof beyond their assertions.
The court said what the men did was not racially motivated despite their posting that refugees and migrants should be collared and acquitted the defendants of most charges, including incitement to commit violence and unlawful carrying weapons.
The court gave two defendants a five-year suspended sentence on condition they pay a fine that wasn’t disclosed. The defendant who made the video received three more months suspended for breach of privacy.
The man was detained after the video showed a jeep pulling a trailer along a dirt road in northern Greece, and he was heard asking another person to open its doors. Two migrant men can be seen crammed inside the trailer, said Reuters then.
“Get organized, let’s all go out and round them up. They will burn us… ” the man, who police said is a foreign national, could be heard saying in Greek in the video, the news agency reported.
At the time, police said the man, who owns the vehicle, had illegally detained 13 Syrian and Pakistani migrants. Two Greek nationals who allegedly helped him were also arrested. Police said the 13 detained entered the country unlawfully.
The state-run Athens-Macedonia News Agency AMNA said a Supreme Court prosecutor ordered an investigation into the video but no report that anything came of it as often happens in Greece.
The news agency reported the prosecutor said, “Phenomena of racist violence against immigrants are worrying,” and described the video as “a racist delirium of violence, accusing immigrants of ‘burning us’ and inciting others to racist pogroms, calling on them to organize and imitate him.’”
