NEWS

In Brief

IOANNINA MURDER

Suspect sent to Korydallos, bloodied rope found on his farm A metalworker charged with the murder of an 11-year-old girl found strangled in his store in the northern town of Ioannina on Wednesday was yesterday sent to Athens’s Korydallos jail where he will undergo psychiatric tests following a unanimous decision by an investigating magistrate and a prosecutor who heard his defense yesterday. Christos Kolovos, 36, claimed his grandparents had urged him to «make a sacrifice» in a dream but said there had been no more killings despite his previous hints of another seven human sacrifices. Kolovos’s lawyer denied rumors linking his client to Satanism. Blood-stained ropes found at Kolovos’s farm in Arta were yesterday sent for laboratory tests. ACROPOLIS BLAST Man charged over grenade explosion claims he found device under bike A man charged in connection with the explosion of a hand grenade detonator in the Dionysos restaurant under the Acropolis on Monday, yesterday paid 3,000 euros in bail to secure his release pending trial. Giorgos Anagnostopoulos, 27, who was injured in the blast, claims he found the device under his motorbike without realizing what it was. Olga Pasianidi, 21 – an alleged prostitute from Kazakhstan who was with Anagnostopoulos when the device exploded in the latter’s hands – was also released on bail. MUSEUMS Free entry today, strike threatened Entrance to museums across the country will be free today to mark World Museum Day. Yesterday, guards at museums and ancient sites staged a four-hour work stoppage and threatened to begin a series of 48-hour strikes – starting with the weekends of May 25 and June 1 – demanding higher salaries. Earthquake suit The relatives of employees of the Ricomex factory killed or seriously injured when the factory collapsed during the September 1999 earthquake in Athens yesterday appealed to the Justice Ministry against a decision by an Athens court to postpone until next February their cases for compensation against the factory’s owners. The court said it had postponed the cases so that they can all be heard together as most have witnesses in common. The six families are suing for a total of 11.7 million euros. Incest A Cretan father charged with raping his 16-year-old daughter for the past seven years appeared before a prosecutor in the western port of Hania yesterday. Andreas Kapadoukakis, 52, was arrested on Thursday. A medical report confirmed his daughter had been raped. Black Sea genocide The genocide by Turkish forces of around 350,000 ethnic Greeks from the Black Sea from 1917 to 1922 is the theme of a reception tomorrow evening at Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University, to be opened by Parliament Speaker Apostolos Kaklamanis. The official remembrance day for the Black Sea genocide, May 19 marks the day Kemal Ataturk landed at the Black Sea port of Samsun in 1919. Illegal immigrants Police in the western Athenian district of Peristeri were yesterday searching for the driver of a container truck in which they found 50 illegal immigrants who said they had paid 3,000 dollars each to a Greek man who said he would take them to Italy. The migrants – who included Afghans, Kurds, Iraqis and Pakistanis – were discovered after neighbors heard banging from inside the truck and notified police. They told police they had been in Greece for about three days. Missing farmer Rescue workers, police and residents of the village of Vrontou in the northern prefecture of Pieria yesterday continued to comb forestland at the foot of Mt Olympus in their search for a farmer who – missing since Thursday night – called his family yesterday to tell them he felt unwell. Vassileios Kartsabas, 33, had set off for his dairy farm in Palia Vrontou. The mobile phone he used to call his family has been switched off. School exams End-of-term and school-leaving examinations start on Tuesday. Yesterday, thousands of secondary school teachers seeking the recruitment of 8,000 extra staff protested outside the Ministry of Macedonia and Thrace in Thessaloniki while teachers across the country participated in two three-hour work stoppages.

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