Sunday, November 19, 2006

Police brutality

Imagine a country where plainclothes police can beat a suspect to a bloody pulp in front of one of the biggest international hotels, have this witnessed by TV cameras, eight university professors (including professors of law) and a whole troop of fellow officers and nothing happens.

Unbelievably, this is exactly what did happen on Friday, the 17th November a few metres from the entrance to the Thessaloniki's ABC hotel in the aftermath of the riots that took place around the university. Five cops systematically beat and humiliated a hapless student in full view of hundreds of witnesses. Whether or not, he'd been involved in the troubles earlier is beside the point. Mega channel showed pictures of police officers kicking their prisoner in the face, punching him in the stomach (whilst the other held his arms) and generally brutalising their prisoner who was later taken to hospital with a broken nose, a mouth full of stitches and concussion.

The worst of all was seeing the head of the city's police department defend the actions of his officers as a legitimate and flatly refuse to accept that they were doing anything blame worthy, even as the images of the played on the screen. Apparently, the official report says that he was "resisting arrest".



Their brutality is only matched by their gross incompetence.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unbelievable!
If I hadn't seen the footage myself I would have said there's no way this could have happened.

teacher dude said...

I was at the march and the troubles afterwards and I tell you the police are as bad and out of control as the anarchists