Immigrants threatened with arms by police in Athens

greece / turkey / cyprus | migration / racism | news report Thursday May 03, 2012 12:19 by Dmitri (republishing) - MACG (personal capacity) ngnm55 at gmail dot com

Undercover policemen with firearms, first threaten an immigrant and nearby group of students

Undercover policemen with firearms, first threaten an immigrant and nearby group of students, then prosecute the immigrant under made-up charges.

The Law School of Athens (Nomiki) is suffering all this time a "criminal siege" by gangs of police thugs and undercover cops. The most recent incident:In the evening of Monday, April 30nth, a Senegalese immigrant was sitting quietly outside the entrance of the Law School, on Massalia pedestrian street, waiting for a friend of his. He is not selling any merchandise, he has his legal papers on him. He is thus, pefrectly "legal".

Suddently, a dozen of plain clothes police thugs come and start to brutally beat him: kicks, punches, on the head, the hands, the feet. The thugs' beatings and the man's screams came alarmed of a few students from the school, who approached to help him. What followed is the immigrant's nightmare. One of the police thugs draws his firearm and points it to the immigrant's face.

Once he sees the students approaching, he turns it towards them as well. On the sight of the gun, the students move back and the immigrant is taken as a prey of the vultures. He is driven to the police station and there they press charges on him for two felonies and one misdemeanor:

- Robbery attempt: to cover up for their armed threat against civilians lives, the cops come up with a fictitious story of the immigrant trying to steal the gun...

- Unprovoked and dangerous physical injury...

- Resistance against a person (police officer) who went into serious personal riskand what's a record:- Accusing the immigrant of covering his facial characteristics, so all charges go under all aggravating provisions of the "hoodie-law".

[translator's note: The hoodie-law or "koukoulonomos" (after "koukouloforoi", the "hooded rioters") is a law voted by the Greek parliament on 2009, aggravating all crimes penetraded by persons "covering or altering their facial characteristics". Its initial purpose was to counter the rise of anarchist and militant demonstrations, in fact it came a few weeks after December 2008. It is since then exclusively used against people arrested in demonstrations to turn ridiculous misdemeanors where the accused would be released on bail or on parole, into felonies coming with long-term prison charges).

On May 3rd at 11:30, the immigrant were to face a state prosecutor who will decide whether he will be subjected to pre-trial imprisonment.

There was a solidarity gathering call here (in Greek): http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_...96292

Nothing will remain unanswered...