Forensic Architecture and Forensis in a press conference discussing findings of a recent investigation about the Moria fire, with the participation of lawyers representing the defendants and the MoriaTrialWatch initiative by Solomon and omniatv.
In the late hours of 8 September 2020, large fires broke out at the migrant camp of Moria, on the frontier island of Lesvos, Greece, displacing thousands of people and reducing to ashes what had until then been the epicentre of the EU’s carceral archipelago. Only a few days after the fire, the police arrested six young asylum seekers (known as ‘the Moria 6’), five of them minors, and accused them of arson. The ‘Moria 6’ were convicted in two separate trials which were widely heralded as a ‘parody of justice’, with five of the 6 being convicted on the testimony of a single witness, who never appeared in court.
In the context of the upcoming appeal trial in Lesvos, on 6 March, FA/Forensis were commissioned by the lawyers representing four of the defendants to reconstruct the fire and cross-examine the key witness statement. Drawing from hours of footage from that night, our investigation, which will be launched in the press conference, reveals severe inconsistencies in the witness testimony and casts further doubt over the evidence upon which the judgement of the young asylum seekers was based. The investigation also situates the last fire within the overcrowded camp’s history of hundreds of outbreaks, demonstrating that it constitutes instead a foreseeable result of the precarious and unsafe living conditions manufactured and maintained for years by EU and Greek authorities.
In this press conference we’ll hear from the FA/Forensis researchers who led this investigation, we will discuss the upcoming trial with the legal team representing the defendants, and we will learn about ‘Moria Trial Watch’, a new observatory which will publish a live feed of the proceedings, an initiative by Solomon and omniatv, supported by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung – Οffice in Greece and State of Concept Athens:
Effie Doussi, Vicky Aggelidou, Natassa Ntailiani, Vasilis Psomos, lawyers representing the defendants
Dimitra Andritsou, Stefanos Levidis, Forensic Architecture/Forensis
Stavros Malichudis, Solomon
The press conference will be held in Greek, and will be published online on Monday 6 March: https://fb.me/e/2JjO5lPbS // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVhh-n3WI80
For more information please contact: info@forensic-architecture.org or forensis@counter-investigations.org
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