Korydallos Prison director suspended over release of police killer
The director of the maximum-security Korydallos Prison, near Piraeus, as well as two prison workers were suspended from duty on Monday following the release on October 7 of a man accused of participating in the brutal killing in 2011 of two special guards of the police’s motorcycle-riding Dias squad.
Giorgos Emertzidis and four other men were being held in pretrial custody in Korydallos Prison over the armed holdup of a kiosk and the subsequent killing in the Athenian suburb of Rendi in March last year of two police officers chasing them after the robbery.
Emertzidis was released from Korydallos Prison on October 7 after a court found insufficient evidence to hold him for the kiosk holdup, even though he had not completed his 18-month pretrial sentence in connection to the ensuing shooting of the Dias officers.
The trial over the killing of the police officers, in which Emertzidis was to appear with another four accomplices, had been scheduled for December 10. An arrest warrant is also pending for a fifth man who is believed to have fled to Russia.
The Justice Ministry on Monday issued a statement saying that it had not been informed of Emertzidis’s release, «neither by the prosecutor, nor the relevant authorities, nor the administration of the prison.» The ministry ordered the suspension of Korydallos Prison’s director as well as of two guards as it investigates the incident.
