In Brief
Precinct unrest
Migrants start fire after detainee attempts suicide Immigrant detainees being held at the main police precinct in Tripoli, in the Peloponnese, set fire to blankets during a protest yesterday sparked by the alleged attempt by a Palestinian detainee to commit suicide. The Palestinian, who reportedly faced deportation, had been in detention at the precinct for two weeks. It remained unclear how he attempted to take his own life. The fire that broke out in the precinct was quickly brought under control and no injuries were reported. City violence Albanian shot dead in square A 27-year-old Albanian national died early on Sunday after being shot several times in the popular Fokionos Negri Square in the district of Kypseli, near central Athens. Police had no leads regarding the perpetrator of the crime by late yesterday. Another violent incident that took place shortly after midnight on Saturday near Omonia Square resulted in the serious injury of three migrants of Asian origin. According to police, the injuries were the result of a brawl that broke out between three of them in a third-floor apartment near the square. Border open Protesting farmers yesterday opened the border crossing with Bulgaria at Promachonas to allow holidaymakers who had left Greece for the long weekend to return without any problems. The farmers ahd been blocking the crossing for nearly a month to push for the immediate release of subsidies. Illegal adoption Police in Iraklio, Crete, on Saturday detained three Bulgarian nationals and two locals in connection with an alleged illegal adoption. Local officers arrested a 25-year-old Bulgarian woman, alleged to be the mother of the baby, her 28-year-old Bulgarian partner and her 48-year-old mother. Officers also arrested a 54-year-old Cretan woman alleged to have paid 5,000 euros to adopt the baby, born in a local clinic last Friday, and a 51-year-old local woman alleged to have acted as a mediator in the illicit transaction. The newborn boy is being cared for at a local state hospital. Chinese New Year Members of the Chinese community in Athens and local residents celebrated Chinese New Year at Kotzia Square in the city center on Sunday. Museum director People from politics and the arts paid tribute to the director of Athens’s Byzantine and Christian Museum, Dimitrios Konstantios, who died on Saturday at the age of 59. There had been no official statement regarding the cause of his death yesterday. Konstantios, who had been head of the museum since 1999, is to be buried at 1 p.m. today at the capital’s First Cemetery.
