Security boosted at officers’ trial
The two police officers on trial for the fatal shooting of teenager Alexis Grigoropoulos in December 2008 arrived at a court in Amfissa, central Greece, amid high security yesterday, a day after getting conditional release from custody. Epaminondas Korkoneas and Vassilis Saraliotis, freed on Sunday after 18 months in custody, arrived at the courts in a van escorted by three counterterrorism officers. The block around the court building has been cordoned off and police are guarding the apartments where the two defendants are staying. A coroner testifying as a witness for the Grigoropoulos family dismissed Korkoneas’s claim that he had shot into the air as a warning and not directly at the 15-year-old. According to Symeon Mesogitis, the wound left by the bullet in the teenager’s body and the deformities of the bullet itself rule out such a scenario.
