Man’s death ‘overlooked’
The police are trying to determine why officers who discovered the body of a 27-year-old drug addict five years ago in central Athens, and subsequently arranged for his burial, failed to report his death to his relatives, who have been looking for him since 2003. The relatives found out about the man’s death only earlier this week when they popped into their local police station to ask how the investigation into his disappearance was progressing. They had declared him missing on July 6, 2003, just two days after the man’s body was discovered, according to police. The officers who discovered the body of the man in the district of Aghios Panteleimonas, central Athens, evidently mistook him for a homeless person and arranged for him to be buried at the expense of the Municipality of Athens. A senior officer of the Attica police force told Kathimerini that «the unprofessionalism of two or three police officers» had probably been to blame. An internal inquiry is now under way to determine exactly what happened.
