I share grief for stabbed Briton, says suspect's mother

Robert Sebbage, the British teenager stabbed to death on the Greek island of Zante, pictured with David Beckham in 2007. Photograph: Andrew Couldridge/Action Images

The mother of the young Greek accused of murdering a British holidaymaker on the Ionian island of Zante (Zakynthos) said she was driven by only one desire – to comfort the murdered teenager's mother.

Breaking her silence for the first time since 19-year-old Robert Sebbage was fatally stabbed in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Louise Morfis said her entire family had been thrown into mourning by the "terrible" crime.

"My heart goes out to another mother, please tell her I want to hold her," said the Australian-born English teacher. "No one can judge pain and no one feels it like the mother of a child," she told the Observer after placing a candle beside the spot in the party resort of Laganas where Sebbage, a Reading FC fan, was fatally stabbed.

"We are both going through the same thing. We are both victims. She has lost her son and I have lost mine. For the rest of his life he will suffer for what he has done," Morfis sighed, struggling to hold back tears.

A former England football mascot who walked into Wembley stadium with David Beckham in 2007, Sebbage, from Tadley, Hampshire, died almost instantly after being knifed by 21-year-old taxi driver Stelios Morfis. Four of Sebbage's friends were also stabbed.

Laganas has been shocked by the killing. Late last Friday young holidaymakers could be seen paying their respects at the murder scene in the resort's main, neon-lit strip. A local nightclub placed a floral tribute at the spot, and a white chrysanthemum wreath hanging from a lamp post read: "With our deepest sympathy, Danny and Louise Morfis."

"He was bleeding badly and everybody rushed and took off their T-shirts to try and stop the blood," said an Ethiopian tattoo artist who witnessed the attack. "He stumbled up to my table and then he just fell. Everyone was in shock. The other boys, who were also injured, were crying 'help, help'."

The young Britons were enjoying the last night of their first holiday abroad when the row erupted. According to police accounts of the incident, they began taunting Morfis with laser pens, before the 6ft 3in bodybuilder lashed out at them with a seven-inch penknife his taxi-driver father said he kept in the car for peeling fruit.

"I cannot stop thinking about him [Sebbage]," said Louise Morfis, dressed in black linen. "My family is in mourning. For three nights I haven't slept. I can't sleep, Stevie [Stelios], my son, can't sleep. He keeps saying: 'Sorry, sorry, I never meant it'."

Morfis is no newcomer to trouble – earlier this month he was arrested after another altercation on the Ionian isle. But initial reports that he had tried to escape from Zante in a speedboat were wrong. Police say he fled on foot into the fields outside Laganas, from where he was quickly coaxed by his father into giving himself up. The former presidential guard has been charged with murder. Under Greek law he could spend up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

Jason Mason, one of the other young Britons who were attacked, suffered a punctured lung in the brawl and remains in serious condition in hospital.

"I totally understand it [the reaction of the British press] because, where there is a loss of life and people don't see the whole picture, there is always anger," said Morfis's mother.

"It should never have happened. They're children and didn't know what they were doing, of that I am certain. If they knew what they were doing, his mother wouldn't be here [collecting her son's body] and nor would I.

"I don't want my countrypeople to think it was Greek against English. We speak English at home. My twin sister is married to an Englishman.

"My son's life will never be the same. My family's life will never be the same again," she lamented, as she turned away, a figure of grief in a tragedy that tourist-dependent Greece is not likely to forget easily.

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Grief and anger over stabbing at Greek resort of British youth Robert Sebbage

Former England football mascot Robert Sebbage, 18, who died after being stabbed during a confrontation with a taxi driver in Laganas on the Greek island of Zakynthos. Photograph: ENTERPRISE NEWS AND PICTURES

Bloodstains still mark the place where Robert Sebbage was stabbed. On Friday night, a floral tribute to the former England football mascot was erected at the spot by a mourning procession led by the father of the Greek taxi driver who plunged the knife into the 19-year-old holidaymaker's heart.

For a while, Laganas, Europe's party capital, went quiet as the bars and clubs and open-front restaurants along its neon-lit strip turned off their sound systems.

"This is a double tragedy," lamented Dionysios Morfis, hours after his taxi driver son, Stelios, was imprisoned on charges of premeditated murder after confessing to stabbing Sebbage and four of his friends in an early morning brawl on Wednesday night.

"A boy has been killed and his family destroyed, but my own son will pay for it for the rest of his life. We are a broken family, too."

In 2007 Sebbage walked into Wembley stadium with David Beckham at his side; the then 14-year-old from the town of Tadley in Hampshire was a Reading FC fan who had battled a rare neuropathic bowel disorder requiring regular trips to hospital.

Police are still trying to establish what happened in this instance. But after his death, as the holiday season gets into full swing, Greece's premier island resort in the Ionian sea is seething with barely disguised hatred between British partygoers determined to have a good time and Greek locals disgusted with their behaviour.

"This place is a boiling cauldron," said Giorgos Kallivis, who spent several hours with sweat pouring down his cheeks in the baking heat vainly trying to remove the blood from the pavement in front of his pottery shop. "Whoever says otherwise is closing their eyes to the truth. I'm not excusing what happened, but it was going to happen. And it could happen again.

"Every night there's a fight, someone gets beaten up. Tour operators are to blame: all they are interested in is getting the kids drunk, and that's where they start to misbehave and all the trouble starts."

Greece is accustomed to young Britons who, like Sebbage, are often taking their first holiday abroad alone. But, after Malia in Crete and Faliraki in Rhodes, Laganas has scaled new heights in the realm of anything-goes behaviour.

This week, the debauchery was on full display as beer-swilling youngsters careened around the resort on oversized quad bikes in the morning and emerged from marathon pub crawls in intoxicated fury at night.

"Every morning I see them on the beach totally drunk when I'm laying out the loungers," said Philippos Gorgoras, a hotel employee. "Today there was a couple having sex over there, and 10 others standing around them wildly clapping. What struck me was that the couple didn't seem to mind."

The stabbing has shocked Greeks, but little pity has been shown Stelios Morfis. He had been a member of Athens' elite presidential guard before returning to the island to work for his father's cab firm. Born in Sydney to an Australian mother, the burly 21-year-old has run into trouble before. "Greeks are a hospitable people. What he did was absolutely deplorable," said Nikos Diamantopoulos, a taxi driver in Patras town on the Peloponnese. "He might be saying he lashed out in self defence with his father's fruit knife, but it's unacceptable. A lot of us are very afraid that this will reflect badly on taxi drivers in Greece."

More than anything, the attack has prompted soul-searching among a debt-stricken nation dependent on tourism.

Seated before an icon in his air-conditioned office, the police chief in Laganas, Dimitrios Angeloudis, was in no doubt where Greece had gone wrong. Tourism, he said, had become seriously toxic.

Though British police officers, including rape specialists from Devon and Cornwall, visited the resort earlier this year, Angeloudis believes that no amount of help will resolve a situation increasingly out of control.

"Not even an army could solve it. The root cause of the problem has to be dealt with first, starting with the pub crawls, but nobody wants to do that, because a lot of people would stand to suffer.

"The only way out is if Laganas improves its infrastructure and focuses on a better-quality tourism. But that will require time, and, again, loss of money."

Local officials admit that adulterated alcohol also plays a role. Bars in the resort are notorious for serving cocktails mixed with pure spirit, part of an age-old tradition of making servings go further.

"I've requested that there be quality control, that random tests be conducted on bottles in bars here, and it just hasn't happened," said Angeloudis. "These drinks encourage the very bad behaviour, which includes throwing bottles at taxis and police cars."

For Britons visiting Laganas, there has been shock at the death followed by anger and, among some, a desire for revenge, with holidaymakers threatening to stage protest rallies to "take back our blood".

"Taxi drivers are especially aggressive and it's put all of us on edge," said Alex Cambell, as he distributed flyers outside a club in the resort's main strip. "They get a lot of flak, but they're also well-known for beating tourists up."

Ben Phillips, a criminology student at Hull, put it another way: "I think this year will be my last party holiday. Next year I want to go travelling to see a bit of the world. I want to go to Peru."

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