The decision that will decide whether the two accused in the gruesome death of student Eleni Topaloudi will leave the courtroom of the Mixed Jury Court of Appeal again as lifers, as they were in the first instance, or whether they will receive more favorable criminal treatment is likely to come today.
The court is expected to deliver its verdict today after noon or in the afternoon on the two men almost the same age as the 21-year-old student who raped her by beating her savagely at the older defendant's holiday home and then carried her alive and dumped her on a rocky beach in the Lindos area of Rhodes.
- "I live with false dreams, what would she do today if she were alive" says mother of Eleni Topaloudi
Appellants and jurors are asked to weigh the facts, the experts' data and what the witnesses in the case introduced as well as what the two young defendants claim and decide what will be the just punishment for the double crime. A crime with the confessed presence of the two defendants at the places, home and beach, and at the times of its commission.
The 24-year-old Roditis and his 22-year-old co-defendant of Albanian origin, according to the accusation, acted together at every stage of the night that was fatal for Helen. They deny that they acted together, each holding the position of an inactive person who was simply in the room when the student was tortured and raped, blaming the other for what happened in the first stage inside the house and in the final stage when the badly beaten 21-year-old girl was thrown into the sea.
The prosecutor
The prosecutor in her summation at the previous hearing asked the court to declare both guilty, as the charge was introduced against them, stressing that both were equally involved in both the brutal sexual assault of Eleniand the transportation of her while she was in a comatose state and her precipitation on a rocky beach in Rhodes, where her death occurred. She also asked that the court not hear at all the allegations of the two defendants about the sexual evening they arranged with Eleni, stressing that the student started out that night to go for souvlaki.
According to the prosecution's proposal that the court will consider today, against Eleni's contrary will and with the use of physical force, the two defendants proceeded with her successively to intercourse. When the student told them that she would report them, homicide ensued: The homicide was committed by both of them in order to silence the girl. If someone did not want to, he would have called for help, said the prosecutor who stressed that the court should not accept any condition about psychological problems and removal of imputation invoked by the Rhodesian defendant.
[/P]The proceedings will begin in the morning at the conclusion of the arguments.
Source: APE
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