Jailed ArmA 3 devs refused bail and appeal

ArmA 3 developers Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar have been refused bail, being held for 70 days in an overcrowded Greek cell, and have now been refused an appeal against their charges of espionage.

The Czech friends will now be tried in a Greek court – they’ve waited for weeks to hear their appeal verdict due to a strike in the Greek legal system. The pair have been accused of spying on Greek military installations, and are looking at up to 20 years in jail.

ArmA 3 is set on the island where they were arrested, but developer Bohemia Interactive has claimed that the two were just there on holiday.

The Czech developers have spoken about the less-than-stellar conditions they’re living in before, but did they say they were being treated fairly. According to their family, things haven’t improved, and the two have lost their hopeful optimism.

“They’re in a cell with over 25 people, they sleep on the ground,” Miloslav Buchta, father of Ivan, said. “They have food twice a day.”

“Our boys no longer tell us on the phone that it’s alright, that they’re handling it,” one of their mothers’ said. “After the court’s decision we only hear from them something that no parent ever wants to hear: Mom, dad, please save us.”

The men’s families are now trying to take the matter to the Czech president and prime minister, saying that the country’s foreign ministry haven’t done enough to help.

“We cannot agree with the statement [that we’re not doing enough],” a foreign ministry spokesman said. “We are very intensely working on this matter from all possible angles.”