ATHENS | The family of Bakari Henderson, the 22-year-old Texan killed in a bar fight last year on the Greek island of Zakynthos, is hoping for a measure of justice as a court is poised to issue its verdict in a high-profile prosecution of a group of Europeans charged with the killing.
The case will decide the fate of seven Serbs, a Greek and a Bosnian-Brit who dispute killing the young black entrepreneur in a confrontation at a bar. Last month, Greek prosecutors argued that all nine defendants are guilty — six for first-degree murder, one for complicity in first-degree murder and two for bodily harm.
Meanwhile, members of the victim’s Austin, Texas, family say they have been waiting for justice for more than a year. Their anger has only been fueled by what they say in the defendants’ improper behavior during the trial.
“I was hoping [the defendants] would show some remorse and at least apologize,” said Jill Henderson, Bakari’s mother. She and Phil Henderson, her husband and Bakari’s father, have been in Greece monitoring the trial. “They’re acting like they didn’t have much involvement. They have no remorse,” Mrs. Henderson said.
Bakari Henderson visited Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea with two friends in early July 2017 to produce a photo shoot for his just-formed luxury sportswear line. He had recently graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in finance and entrepreneurship.
According to official reports, a Serbian man attacked Henderson at the bar after the American took a selfie with a Serbian woman. Hit in the face and having a glass thrown at him, his attorneys alleged, Henderson responded by throwing a beer bottle and punching his assailants.
Henderson then left the bar, but a group of 10 men followed him. They allegedly knocked him to the ground and punched him on the head, neck and torso with brass knuckles, according to the coroner’s report. A 10th assailant has not been identified.
That report was damning, said Mrs. Henderson.
“Most of them said that they were trying to defend themselves from him,” she said. “But if you’re running after somebody, how are you defending yourself? Especially when he’s running to get away from you.”
The indictment issued last April by the Misdemeanors Board of Zakynthos, three-judge panel on the island, concluded that during the 11-second attack young American was hit 33 times. The coroner said the blows to the head led to his death.
Greek media published closed-circuit television footage from the nearby businesses, footage presented as evidence in the indictment, that appeared to corroborate the prosecutors’ case.
Seven of the nine defendants have been held in jail since Henderson’s killing. Two were released on bail while standing trial.
Due to privacy laws in Greece, authorities only released the ages of the defendants and not their names. The defendants are between 19 and 34 years old.
For the defense
The defendants’ lawyers all asked the court to lower their clients’ charges from first-degree murder to assault and battery causing serious bodily injury. Some of the defendants claimed that they were not present at the assault.
“My clients don’t deny that they hit the victim,” Alexis Kougias, a lawyer for three of the defendants, said in a phone interview. “Using the videos available and the testimony from a coroner at the University of Athens, we proved that my clients hit him after he was already dead.”
Henderson died from “the first blows given by three other defendants, which ruptured a vessel on the base of his skull, an injury similar to a frontal car crash,” the attorney said. “Therefore, my clients shouldn’t be accused of complicity to his death.”
Mrs. Henderson dismissed that line of defense as ludicrous.
“We hope they all get life because, in Greece, [a sentence of life in prison] is different than in America,” she said, noting that the Greek justice system was relatively lenient and often offered parole early. “Even if they serve 20 years, they’ll have plenty of time to have a full productive life. They’ll in my mind still be able to get out and have a family and leave a legacy, whereas Bakari doesn’t get that opportunity.”
A jury of three judges and four citizens in the southern Greek city of Patras will render the verdict.
As the notoriety surrounding the case has grown here, local Greeks have rallied around the family. Mrs. Henderson said the people of Patras were treating them with compassion.
“When we’re not at the hearing, there are people that will attend and send us updates on what’s going on,” she said. “Others walk up to us in the street in order to give us their condolences. Even those who don’t speak English, they touch their heart with their hand and hug us.”
At the family home in Austin, said Mrs. Henderson, lies a duffle bag waiting to be opened. It’s Bakari’s bag from his trip to Greece. His friends that were traveling with him in Zakynthos returned it to his family. His parents haven’t opened it yet. They will, eventually.
“At some point we’ll open it,” Mrs. Henderson said. “We’ve just haven’t had time to focus on anything else other than the trial.”
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