In Brief
CONVICT APPEALS
Alleged member of ‘Gang of 16’ says evidence is inadmissible A key suspect in the so-called «Gang of 16» case, convict Vassilis Stefanakos, has challenged the admissibility of the secretly recorded telephone conversations that have been used by prosecutors to charge the group’s alleged members with a series of criminal activities. Court sources said yesterday that, in an appeal to the magistrate handling the investigation, Stefanakos claims that the conversations have been heavily edited and copies of the original recordings have not been handed to the judge by the National Intelligence Service (EYP) which worked with the police on the case. OFFICER ARRESTED Border guard caught with drugs Two people, one of whom is a police officer, have been arrested in the Mesopotamia area near the northern city of Kastoria for alleged drug dealing. According to authorities, following a preplanned operation, the officer, a border guard, was caught with some 300 grams of heroin in his possession. Police said the unnamed officer obtained the drug from a foreign dealer on behalf of another man, who was also arrested. Scouts recovering Doctors on Crete yesterday said they are hopeful that three children injured when a driver lost control of his car earlier this week will make a full recovery. A statement released by the local health authority said the two boys and one girl are in stable condition despite suffering serious injuries. Patricide Police said yesterday that they were looking for a 32-year-old man suspected of stabbing his father to death at the family’s home in Neo Peramo, west of Athens. It was not immediately clear what led to the suspect allegedly murdering the 65-year-old. Makarezos dies Nikolaos Makarezos, one of the leaders of the military coup in 1967, has died aged 90, it was confirmed yesterday. Along with Georgios Papadopoulos and Stylianos Pattakos, Makarezos was behind the overthrow of the government of Panayiotis Kanellopoulos in favor of a military junta that lasted for seven years. He was initially coordination minister and then deputy prime minister before being ousted in November 1973 by the head of the military police, Dimitris Ioannidis. Makarezos was jailed following the junta’s collapse in 1974 but had been under house arrest due to health problems since 1990. Bus attacked A local bus in Thessaloniki came under a hail of rocks and pieces of wood late yesterday. It had been carrying a large number of Aris soccer club supporters to their team’s stadium in the Harilaou district to watch a friendly match against Argentinean side Boca Juniors. The bus came under attack as it was passing Aristotle University. A number of windows were smashed and one passenger suffered minor head injuries. Pot plots Four people were arrested yesterday near the city of Ptolemaida, in northern Greece, for allegedly growing cannabis plants. In three separate operations, police uprooted 44 cannabis plants before arresting the four men, aged between 42 and 49. Also yesterday, a man was arrested near Argos in the Peloponnese after 10 cannabis plants were found in a field belonging to his mother.
