Lawyers representing the suspects arrested in connection with the 2010 Marfin bank fire have strongly disputed the evidence presented by Greek police, arguing that the case relies on weak and legally problematic material rather than direct identification of the accused.
At a joint press conference, the defense team challenged the official narrative surrounding the arrests of two 42-year-old men and, more recently, a 46-year-old woman, who are under investigation over the attack on the Marfin bank branch in Athens that claimed the lives of three employees.
The lawyers argued that the new case file contains serious evidentiary gaps, violates the presumption of innocence and closely resembles an earlier prosecution that ended in the acquittal of all defendants.
“The suspects have not been identified”
Defense lawyer Thanasis Kampagiannis said the public has been given the false impression that the case has been conclusively solved.
“Our message is completely different from what has been presented by the media and leaked by the Greek police. Things are not like that,” he said.
According to Kampagiannis, the official forensic report does not identify the suspects through facial features, body characteristics or even body type.
“The identification has nothing to do with physical characteristics or body shape. It concerns movable objects,” he said, arguing that investigators have linked the suspects to items visible in the footage rather than to identifiable individuals.
He also maintained that the supposed new evidence is minimal and largely consists of a re-evaluation of material that has been in the authorities’ possession for many years.
“The new evidence is very limited. It is essentially a reprocessing of older evidence,” he said.
Defense challenges anonymous email
Lawyer Annie Paparousou accused authorities of undermining the presumption of innocence by presenting the suspects as guilty before the judicial process has run its course.
She argued that the renewed criminal investigation was triggered by an anonymous email, describing this as one of the most problematic aspects of the case.
“The most important point is that the case file, involving extremely serious charges, began with an anonymous email sent by an unidentified individual,” she said.
According to Paparousou, investigators never attempted to identify the sender or summon that person to testify, despite using the information as the basis for reopening the investigation.
She argued that initiating such a serious criminal case without verifying the source of the anonymous allegations raises fundamental questions about the quality and reliability of the evidence gathered afterward.
Similarities with the 2011 trial
Lawyer Dimitris Katsaris, who represented defendants in the first Marfin trial in 2011 that resulted in unanimous acquittals, said he sees “many tragic similarities” between the two cases.
He pointed out that the earlier prosecution had also begun with anonymous information, while the current investigation was launched after an anonymous email.
Katsaris further accused authorities of managing the timing of arrests to shape public opinion.
“They start these cases on a Friday so there is no opposing view until Monday, because newspapers have already closed their editions and the only information available comes from electronic media and police statements,” he said.
He also recalled that during the 2011 case, police had initially claimed they had achieved “100% identification” and described the case as airtight. However, when the investigating judge requested an official comparison between the suspect and the available visual evidence, police reportedly responded within hours that such a comparison could not be carried out because the fingerprint material was of insufficient quality.
Police defend the investigation
Greek police have rejected the defense’s claims, insisting that the arrests were based on newly developed evidence.
According to the Organized Crime Directorate, the investigation was reopened after receiving new intelligence and conducting specialized forensic examinations.
Police say advanced image-enhancement algorithms improved the quality of archived CCTV footage from the bank, allowing investigators to establish documented correlations between the suspects’ morphological characteristics and other identifying features. Authorities also say they identified unique personal objects with distinctive characteristics that, combined with other evidence collected during the investigation, led to the arrests.
