No new Manolada trial, court rules

The Supreme Court has decided that four men who stood trial earlier this year for shooting 28 migrant workers at a strawberry farm in Nea Manolada in the Peloponnese should not be retried.

Supreme Court deputy prosecutor Constantinos Paraskevaidis found that there was no basis for asking for a retrial after his superior, Supreme Court prosecutor Efterpi Koutzamani had asked for the original decision, issued by a court in Patra, to be reviewed.

There was an outcry from rights groups and politicians in July after the owner of the strawberry farm where the mostly Bangladeshi migrants were shot in April last year was cleared of any wrongdoing along with one of his foremen. Two other foremen were convicted of aggravated assault and illegal use of firearms. One was handed a jail term of 14 years and seven months, while the other received a sentence of eight years and seven months. Both appealed and were freed.