In Brief
OFFICER DISCHARGED
Policeman shot by terrorists last month leaves hospital Diamantis Mantzounis, the riot police officer seriously injured in an armed terrorist attack in Exarchia on January 5, was discharged from hospital yesterday. Bullets struck the 21-year-old in the chest and thigh in an attack that was claimed by Revolutionary Struggle as a reprisal for the killing of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos by a police officer one month earlier. Mantzounis underwent two operations and spent two weeks in intensive care. LOAN FRAUDSTER Woman ‘made’ 800,000 euros A 50-year-old woman alleged to have been using forged documents to secure personal loans for third parties, and pocketing between 3,000 and 10,000 euros on each occasion, was arrested in central Athens yesterday. The woman is believed to have sought loans on behalf of civil servants who did not fulfill the prerequisites for the personal loans they wanted. According to sources, the suspect may have have swindled some 800,000 euros in loans from various banks. Cremation decree A presidential decree setting out the terms and conditions for the introduction of cremation in Greece will be published by the end of the month, Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos told Parliament yesterday. Pavlopoulos said the decree took a year to prepare as it presupposes the creation of a new institution in Greece and the settlement of certain issues regarding the protection of the environment. A law paving the way for cremation facilities to be built in Greece was approved by the Council of State, Greece’s highest administrative court, last September. Drug hauls Police in Thessaloniki said yesterday that they had arrested the foreign head of a drug ring that smuggled 162 kilos of cannabis into the country from Bulgaria on Saturday. Officers detained five alleged gang members on Saturday in the Prespes region after stopping four cars in which the drugs had been hidden. Meanwhile in the Cretan port of Iraklion police arrested a 31-year-old foreign national after finding him in possession of more than 700 grams of heroin. The suspect was stopped for questioning after attempting to flee the scene of a traffic accident in the port involving his car. Violent intruders Police in the central town of Trikala yesterday were seeking two men who entered the home of two women, aged 37 and 67, and violently assaulted them. The women both suffered serious head injuries as a result of the beating which, police said, was probably carried out using builders’ tools. There were no signs of forced entry at the womens’ home nor any sign that the intruders’ motive had been robbery. Thessaloniki muggers A 17-year-old ethnic Greek from the former Soviet Union and a 19-year-old Russian were being questioned by police in Thessaloniki yesterday about allegedly mugging two teenagers in the city center on Saturday, one at knifepoint and one at gunpoint. In the first case, the suspects allegedly robbed a 19-year-old of his cash and cellphone before escorting him to his home where they took his laptop. In the second case the suspects allegedly mugged another 19-year-old, taking his cell phone and wallet.
