Fresh Protests in Greece’s Athens

Posted by admin on Dec 21st, 2008 and filed under Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry from your site

Local television channels reported that hundreds of Greek youths staged fresh protests in Athens, clashing with police amid Greece’s worst riots in decades sparked by the recent killing of a teenager by police.

Students threw stones and firebombs at police in the Athens district of Exarchia where 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos had been shot dead on December 6, and also erected roadblocks around the nearby Polytechnic University. The police responded with tear gas, TV channels said.

The riots, sparked by the youth’s killing, earlier spread to other Greek cities, leaving a trail of destruction as youths went on the rampage looting shops and setting fire to hundreds of cars, banks and businesses.

A recent opinion poll published by the Ethnos newspaper said 83% of Greeks were unhappy with the methods used by the government to deal with the violence.

Two police officers have been detained over the teenager’s killing. One of them, Epaminondas Korkoneas, who claims he fired warning shots in self-defense which ricocheted, was charged with murder and the illegal use of his weapon. The second officer, Vassilios Saraliotis, was charged with aiding and betting Korkoneas

Source RIA Novosti

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