Assault victim’s family wants state compensation

Greece’s highest administrative court yesterday heard a compensation claim against the state for a 23-year-old woman who was left with devastating physical and mental injuries after being brutally assaulted by an undocumented migrant in the summer of 2012. Myrto Papadomichelaki’s mother, Maria Kotrotsou, who has launched the legal action on her daughter’s behalf, argues that it would never have happened if the perpetrator, a Pakistani national who had entered Greece without papers two years earlier, had been apprehended for illegal migration and arrested or deported. Kotrotsou is asking the Council of State to repeal an earlier decision by the Athens Administrative Appeals Court, which rejected the claim on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to prove the attack was the indirect result of oversight by the Greek state. Papadomichelaki’s family is seeking €200,000 for moral damages and a lifetime monthly allowance of €2,978 payable from June 2017 to cover medical and other expenses. Her mother and sister are also seeking €50,000 each for moral damages. Papadomichelaki was 15 years old when Ahmed Waqas, 23, attacked her while she was walking along a remote part of a popular beach on the Aegean island of Paros where the mother and daughter had been holidaying. He raped her and bashed her head repeatedly with a stone, before hiding what he believed to be her dead body behind a cluster of rocks. Waqas fully confessed to his crime and was sentenced to life in prison plus 25 years. Papadomichelaki was in a coma for several months and underwent specialist treatment in the United States, but is still unable to communicate or move.