He explained that firstly, the Penal Code passed by the government of ND, starts to be applied from tomorrow and secondly, that the provisions that were applied are provisions that were in force when the tragedy happened because that is what the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights requires. According to this, when someone commits an illegal act, he is tried under the legislation that was in force when he committed it, while the new legislation is only applied in the event that provisions with a more favorable content for the accused have been intervened.
Thus, the Criminal Code, which was applied for the tragedy in Mati, is the one voted by SYRIZA, which provided for much smaller penalties than the Code of the New Democracy government, for which the Minister of Justice gave a detailed presentation to the House.
“So you consciously tried to mislead the world by saying that the ND Code was magically implemented, which is not valid and will be valid from tomorrow. The Criminal Code that we passed two months ago, comes into effect from tomorrow. Not valid until now. Consequently a Code that is not valid cannot be enforced. Can you get out of this fairy tale that the NT Code has been implemented, but it will be effective from tomorrow?” said Mr. Floridis, addressing the seats of the official opposition.
“I see you today fervently in favor of the need for sentences to be served and for severe sentences to be imposed, because there is an outcry from the world in general about the penal system so far,” he also told the SYRIZA MPs and called on them to move even now to a statement that they would now vote for the Code that they did not vote for two months ago so that “the people would hear them and see that they repented”.
At this point in his intervention, the Minister of Justice made a special reference to what was in force with the 2019 Code on the SYRIZA government and what will be in force from tomorrow, when the Code passed two months ago by the ND government will be implemented.
And “in order to make the necessary comparisons”, he specifically stated:
– With the 2019 Code of SYRIZA, for manslaughter by negligence, when it had multiple victims, the maximum sentence was five years. It’s been 10 years now.
– When we have a forest arson due to negligence and there are deaths, the provisions of the Code on SYRIZA, characterized it as a “minor misdemeanor” and the lowest penalty started from 10 days. The ND Code provides that in these cases the minimum penalty is 10 years imprisonment, the maximum penalty is 20 years and a fine of 200,000 and confiscation of the property can be imposed.
– When we have an intentional forest fire and we have deaths, the provisions we have passed say that these sentences must necessarily lead to prison, because no suspension is allowed, no commutation of the sentence is allowed and the appeal has no suspensive effect. That is, prison. With the provisions that were in force, the provisions of the SYRIZA Code were a maximum of 15 years in prison and with the mandatory dismissal, he got out after the mandatory six years. And now, the sentences are life sentences and a life sentence is eligible to apply for parole after 25 years. So six years under SYRIZA and 25 years under ND.
– The SYRIZA Code, one year after the tragedy in Mati, “raised” the maximum prison sentence to eight years from 10, so that the penalty base when it is low can be suspended in its entirety.
“And I want to ask you why? What a pity you had” said at this point, to SYRIZA, the Minister of Justice.
Finally, Mr. Floridis said that “after several years, when the focus was on defending the rights of criminals, the time has come to look at the side of the victims, at the rights that the victims also have and at the part of society which wants to live in a safe environment because its criminal system will create certainty for those who want to do illegal things that the risk of going to prison is serious”. As he said, penal systems are successful, not when they lead to prison, but when they prevent crime, because would-be criminals will know that they will go to prison. While he underlined, that the criminal systems are failed when they give the certainty to the prospective criminal that nothing is going to happen to him.
“We changed this two months ago and it will start to be implemented from tomorrow” noted Mr. Floridis and addressing the opposition parties that did not vote for the new Criminal Code he said: “If you want, you have an opportunity today to declare that it’s time to turn your attention to victim advocacy.”
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