Greece court sentences former state officials over deadly 2020 floods in central Greece

ATHENS (Reuters) - A Greek court on Thursday handed a 15-month suspended prison sentence to a former regional governor in central Greece and three other former officials over the handling of deadly floods in 2020.

Cyclone Ianos swept through central Greece in 2020, killing three people, flooding cities and highways in the region of Thessaly and turning agricultural land into mud lakes near the hardest-hit cities of Karditsa and Farsala.

The court on Thursday found former regional governor Costas Agorastos, a former deputy governor and two former directors of technical projects guilty of omissions that could have prevented the flooding. They have denied any wrongdoing.

Agorastos said outside the court that he could not have stopped a flood, which occurs once in 1,000 years and that he planned to appeal against the ruling.

The court acquitted all of the defendants of involuntary manslaughter charges related to the deaths. But lawyers representing the victims said they would take legal steps to overturn that decision.

"We were really disappointed with the ruling," Vassiliki Soufla, lawyer of one of the victims, told Reuters.

"The death of those people was not an accident, was not a bad moment. It was a result of the collective failure of the state mechanism," Soufla told reporters outside the court.

Greece is struggling to keep pace with a rapid increase in extreme weather.

Last year, Storm Daniel was the second major flood in three years to hit Thessaly, part of a pattern of worsening freak weather in Europe. The flooding - Greece's worst on record - killed 16 people and devastated the fertile region, sweeping away agricultural land, roads and railways.

A legal investigation has been launched into whether any crimes were committed by intention or negligence that worsened the impact of last year's flooding.

(Reporting by Renee Maltezou; Editing by Sharon Singleton)