One of two convicted murderers of a 21-year-old college student on the island of Rhodes, a case that shocked the country in late November 2018, has been ordered to pay nearly one million euros in damages to the victim’s close relatives.
The closely watched decision was issued by a single-justice first instance court on the large Dodecanese Island and will almost certainly be appealed. At the same time, similar rulings adjudicating punitive damages in favor of victims and the relatives of victims have traditionally been difficult to collect in Greece in the past.
Eleni Topaloudi, a native of the Evros prefecture in northeast Greece, was sexually assaulted and tortured for up to three hours by two young men, a native of Rhodes and an Albanian national, on the evening Nov. 28. She was severely injured after repeatedly being hit by a blunt object to the head and dumped – while still barely alive – into the sea from a cliffside. Coroners ruled that she died from drowning, although she may not have survived her serious cranial injuries.
Both men, Manolis Koukouras, who was 21 at the time of the murder, and Alexandros Lujai, who was 19 at the time, were convicted in successive trials, with no extenuating circumstances acknowledged at any instance.
The lawsuit, with Eleni Topaloudi’s parents as the main plaintiffs, demanded damages for the immense emotional distressed they suffered and suffer, according to reports. The suit also cites the “unprecedented violent acts {that transpired} … and the deceit and methodical nature with which the perpetrators tried to conceal their criminal actions.”
The plaintiffs have also filed legal action citing liability on the part of the assailants’ fathers for improper supervision, as they claim, of their sons when they were minors (18 and under) and despite instances of repeated juvenile delinquency. The Topaloudi family has also accused the fathers of the two perpetrators of attempting to cover up the rape-murder.
One of the two convicted men faced the specific civil litigation as a defendant, as the same court ruled that the other man and his father had not been properly subpoenaed. As such, a second lawsuit will have to be filed to seek damages.
The sentence handed down to the two assailants was life in prison plus 15 years, although a “life sentence” under the current Greek penal code does not translate into incarceration until death without the prospect of release, despite recent revisions after 2019 allowing for stricter sentences and parole conditions.