ATHENS — A woman whose husband and two children were among the victims of July 23, 2018 fires that swept through areas northeast of the Greek capital and nearly wiped out the village of Mati said fire officials tried to cover their negligence and wants them to be prosecuted on criminal charges.

A lawyer for Varvara Fytrou presented her claims to a magistrate, Vassilis Kapernaros, who has been investigating the then-ruling Radical Left SYRIZA's shambolic response to the fires that independent reports said caused so many needless deaths.

She accused fire officials of falsifying an incident log to try to hide that they didn't send aerial support to help douse the fast-spreading conflagration that began when a man who still hasn't been identified or prosecuted was trying to burn materials.

The lawyer's brief, said Kathimerini, also claimed that fire officials tried to prevent investigators from having access to surveillance camera footage of the firefighting aircraft that weren't dispatched, as well as blocking them from seeing the fire logs from that day at the Civil Protection Operations Center.