Athens court jails gunman for life over killing of Polish professor

The verdict

A Greek court sentenced a 35-year-old man to life imprisonment for the murder of Przemysław Jeziorski, a marketing lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. The Athens Mixed Jury Court found him guilty by a majority of 4 votes to 3, according to SKAI, and the sentence was reported on 8 October 2026. Fakt and Onet report that the court also found three other men guilty of helping to plan and carry out the attack. NewsIT gives a different account, saying two accomplices had their charge changed to simple complicity in threats and were each sentenced to 10 months in prison.

The killing in Agia Paraskevi

Jeziorski was shot on 4 July 2025 in Agia Paraskevi. He had travelled to Greece for family matters and a planned meeting with his twin children, who were 10 at the time. Fakt describes a masked attacker who fired five shots at the professor's chest and neck and then fled, and Jeziorski died at the scene. In.gr reports that the attacker followed him on foot and opened fire shortly before he reached the home of his former wife, where he was going to see the children. Onet places the shooting on a street in the northern district of Athens.

Investigation and the divorce

Investigators found that the couple was locked in a bitter divorce over custody of the twins and over finances, and in.gr adds disputes over companies the couple had founded together in the United States. Police arrested several suspects, including the former wife's current partner and the three men later convicted of aiding the attack. The gunman confessed after his arrest in July 2025, saying he wanted to end the conflict between his partner and her former husband and that he acted without her knowledge. The former wife, 43, was charged with moral complicity, and investigators said she had commissioned the killing, a claim she denied. In June 2026 she died by suicide in her prison cell while awaiting trial, a few days after the court opened the way for her referral to trial, according to in.gr.

The children

The twins were left without both parents and spent many months in a Greek care centre. The professor's family in Poland pressed for the children to be placed in their care. Fakt reported in June 2026 that a Greek court granted custody of the twins to the professor's brother. The gunman's life sentence was handed down on 8 October 2026, more than a year after the killing in July 2025.