Constantinos Vassilakopoulos, the branch's head of security, Emmanouil Velonakis, branch manager Anna Vakalopoulou and assistant manager Anastasia Koukou are apparently facing charges of negligent homicide after three of the branch's employees - Angeliki Papathanasopoulou aged 32 and four months pregnant at the time, Paraskevi Zoulia, aged 34, and Epameinondas Tsakalis, 36 - died of suffocation after the building was firebombed by protesters during a violent anti-austerity protest in central Athens on May 5, 2010.
In his opening testimony to the court, Zacharias Papathanasopoulos questioned the adequacy of the bank's security and safety procedures.
"The bank should have been secured. The front windows had been repeatedly smashed, yet they were never replaced with shatter-proof glass," Papathanasopoulos said.At the same time he questioned why the branch had not been closed early on the day of the protest given that authorities had warned that they expected violence and that other businesses in central Athens, including several banks on Stadiou Street, had closed when the rally began.
"Firebombs had been thrown at the branch before and the employees had to put the fires out themselves using whatever means were available to them," Papathanasopoulos said.He said that he believes that what happened is because of the criminal indifference of the bank's officials!
"I demand moral compensation," Papathanasopoulos added.According to reports by firefighters who arrived at the scene and by experts who inspected it later, the three employees had been trying to reach the roof of the building when they became trapped and died of suffocation. And the building's only emergency exit was also found locked by investigators.
"We are being told that [the tragedy] was an act of terrorism, but the other staff and my daughter would have been saved if there had been even one emergency exit that allowed them to get to the roof," Papathanasopoulos said.Most of us even watched this tragedy on our television sets. We here at HellasFrappe believe that it was an act of terrorism. We all saw the photos and the videos and know that there were specific anarchist groups that set fire to the building on purpose, in a ploy to create chaos, and frighten protesters in general of ever massing together and protesting again. Nonetheless this does not excuse the bank officials who obviously should also be punished for their indifference.
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