Doctor jailed for drugging
A 50-year-old former neurosurgeon was jailed yesterday for 10 years and eight months because he slipped sleeping pills into the coffees of two of his colleagues, whom he blamed for saddling him with too many night shifts. A Piraeus court found Giorgos Zornatzis guilty of intentionally causing grievous bodily harm to his two fellow neurosurgeons at the Tzaneio hospital and exposing to danger those patients on whom his sedated colleagues operated. In June 2003, Zornatzis admitted to lacing the coffee with barbiturates and heavy sedatives in order to punish his colleagues for allegedly assigning him extra night shifts on the hospital duty roster. After 20 months of spiked drinks, the two doctors grew suspicious because they had difficulty concentrating. One even briefly fell into a coma. Zornatzis was caught red-handed slipping a general anesthetic into the coffee of one of his colleagues. Zornatzis’s lawyer complained that his client had received a harsh sentence.
