NEWS

In Brief

RAIL WORKS

Three ISAP stations close as upgrade project begins The launch of work on the Athens-Piraeus electric railway (ISAP) will lead to the closure of three stations this weekend and next. The Petralona, Thiseion and Monastiraki stations will be closed today and tomorrow as work gets under way. People will be able to use a bus replacement service that will run between Omonia and Tavros. There will be reduced service on the entire ISAP route between January 26 and March 13. A new bus line, 500A, connecting Piraeus and Omonia, is expected to ease congestion. LAWYERS SUE Anger over police behavior More than 20 lawyers filed suits yesterday against police officers in connection to events at the end of last Friday’s education protest. Riot police took a number of lawyers into custody during a standoff between protesters and authorities in Exarchia that resulted in some lawyers being taken into custody. The 22 lawyers claim the officers were guilty of breach of duty, attempted bodily harm and unnecessarily exposing people to tear gas and swearing. Representatives of the Athens Bar Association said that they would meet with Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos to discuss the matter. Bribery case The former head of the Competition Commission, Spyros Zisimopoulos, yesterday told a prosecutor investigating the alleged blackmail of the Mevgal dairy company that he did not have any prior knowledge that the watchdog’s general manager Panayiotis Adamopoulos was using middlemen to approach milk producers during a price-fixing investigation. Adamopoulos was remanded in custody in September 2006 after being accused of colluding with two other men to receive a 2.5-million-euro bribe from Mevgal so the watchdog would not fine the company. Adamopoulos claims that Zisimopoulos knew he was using one of the two others accused as a go-between. Smuggler thwarted Police yesterday were questioning a Bulgarian truck driver after a search of his truck in the region of Megara, western Attica, revealed 19 illegal immigrants hidden in a specially made compartment. Police suspect that the man belongs to an established ring smuggling migrants through Greece to Italy and are seeking two Iraqis believed to be accomplices. The migrants, 18 Afghans and one Lebanese man, are believed to have arrived in Greece from Turkey. Cocaine haul Police in Thessaloniki yesterday were seeking a 36-year-old Bulgarian national believed to have been the intended collector of 70 kilos of cocaine smuggled into the northern port aboard a ship laden with wooden planks from Colombia. Officers searched the ship following a tip-off from the US anti-drug agency. The drugs had been hidden between the planks of wood, according to police, who said the haul, worth an estimated 3 million euros, is the largest ever seized in Thessaloniki. Kallithea blast A homemade explosive device made of gas canisters caused minor damage to a bank in the southern Athens district of Kallithea when it detonated early yesterday. No one was injured in the attack.

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