In Brief
BRUTAL KILLING
Badly beaten body of foreign man found on Hania beach Port Authority officials in Hania were yesterday seeking the killer or killers of a foreign national, aged around 30, whose badly bruised body was found on a beach near the Cretan port in the morning. According to a coroner, the man died from a blow to the head with a rock. An examination of his body also revealed severe injuries to his neck and genitalia. CONSCRIPT DEATH Chief of barracks reassigned The head of a military barracks in Kilkis, northern Greece, where a 21-year-old conscript was found dead on Monday, has been moved from his post, defense officials said yesterday. The soldier, an ethnic Greek from Georgia, was found a full 11 days after his death, according to a coroner, who cited a drug overdose. It was unclear whether the barracks leader faces any charges. Halkia defense A lawyer representing Fani Halkia and her coach Giorgos Panayiotopoulos said yesterday that they both flatly denied the charges of doping against them. Giorgos Agiostratitis said that Halkia had never knowingly taken the anabolic steroid methyltrienolone, or M3, and that Panayiotopoulos had never administered it. The lawyer also claimed that Halkia could have refused to take the doping test she failed and would only have been credited with a «no show,» which would have not been made public. Sailor dead A 40-year-old sailor was killed yesterday when a mooring line on the Express Pegasus ferry snapped as the vessel was docking at the port of Gytheion in the Peloponnese. Michalis Kokkonis had been standing on deck at the time of the accident. He was killed instantly. None of the 245 passengers on board were injured. The local prosecutor ordered the arrest of the ship’s captain and the officer on duty. Drama at sea Port Authority officials on Tinos rescued a 66-year-old swimmer off the island’s southwest coast on Wednesday but could not save a 47-year-old who disappeared in the high waves. Rescue workers responded to the appeals of the women, who had been struggling to swim in the choppy sea, by speeding out on jet skis and patrol boats. There was no sign of the 47-year-old by late yesterday. Chemical leak Fire service workers wearing special protective uniforms yesterday cleaned up several gallons of a toxic chemical that had leaked onto a road near Lamia, central Greece, from a transport services truck. The Bulgarian driver of the truck was unable to tell police anything about the contents of the truck but chemists who examined the substance determined that it was phosphoric acid, which is highly corrosive. No one was hurt. Antiquities haul Police were yesterday questioning a 68-year-old woman on charges of illegally dealing in antiquities after finding several ancient artifacts in her possession. The woman was arrested at the Ethniki Amyna metro station by an undercover police officer posing as a customer interested in buying a Classical-era statue of a griffin. A subsequent search of two houses in Halandri and Nea Makri unearthed several valuable artifacts.
