Four to stand trial over attack on MP at rally
An Athens prosecutor has ordered four suspects to stand trial on charges they attacked conservative MP Giorgos Koumoutsakos.
The four have been identified by Greek police as the perpetrators of the physical assault on the deputy on the sidelines of a rally by Pontic Greeks at Syntagma Square in early November.
They face charges of causing unprovoked bodily harm, unprovoked verbal abuse, disturbing the peace and illegal weapons possession.
The four will be tried by a three-member misdemeanor court.
Charges were dropped against members of Golden Dawn, Greece’s neofascist party, who were present at the rally.
Koumoutsakos was attacked by a mob in front of Parliament as onlookers shouted “Resign” and “Traitor” at the lawmaker. He was punched by at least one person, had his jacket ripped and his glasses knocked off his face.
The incident prompted an exchange of accusations between Greece’s political parties over the moral instigators of the attack.
The demonstration had been organized in response to televised comments by a leftist minister who claimed that the slaughter of thousands of ethnic Greeks living on the shores of the Black Sea by Turkish forces between 1914 and 1923 was ethnic cleansing and not genocide.
