A lawyer who has been in custody since January following his implication in the alleged blackmail of former Culture Ministry general secretary Christos Zachopoulos was yesterday moved to the psychiatric unit of Korydallos Jail after trying to hang himself in his cell.

Christos Nikoloutsopoulos hanged himself from his cell bars using a television cable but was saved by guards after fellow inmates alerted them, prison authorities said. Nikoloutsopoulos had only just been returned to his cell on Monday morning following his transfer to the jail’s psychiatric unit last Friday after a serious bout of depression.

Nikoloutsopoulos, considered a vital witness in the probe of Zachopoulos’s alleged blackmail by a former assistant, had been diagnosed with suicidal tendencies in January following his implication in the scandal.

His lawyer called judicial authorities handling the probe “the moral instigators” of his client’s attempted suicide.