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Legal proceedings against the U.S. government, the Department of Defence and the U.S. Navy have been initiated by the parents of the U.S. Marine who committed suicide at the U.S. Embassy in Athens in August 2012. They accuse the authorities of the country of "neglect and mistreatment of the remains" of their son. Contrary to the information disseminated by FoxNews and NBC, the British channel BBC claims that legal proceedings have been initiated against the Greek authorities as well.
 
Greg and Beverly LaLoup, Brian LaLoup’s parents, have initiated legal proceedings on charges of "psychological abuse" due to an "illegal autopsy" performed abroad (in Greece) after the suicide of their son last summer, seeking compensation of at least $75,000. However, the main thing they want, as they themselves say, is "answers".

The Marine, aged 21, had been to a party at the U.S. Embassy on 12 August 2012 and had admitted to a colleague that he intended to commit suicide. "I have no one to love me", the young man had said while trying to overcome a separation.

As stated by the parents, one of LaLoup’s heads had been informed about the intentions of the young man but, instead of sending him to a specialist to receive psychological assistance, in compliance with the military statutes, he had offered him more to drink.

It seems that later that night, under the influence of alcohol and apparently, upset, as stated in court documents, LaLoup had passed through the security guards, entered an unlocked room in the Embassy where guns were kept and shot himself in the head.

According to the claim filed by the parents, LaLoup had been taken to a state hospital where his death had been established. His remains had been left unattended and then subsequently he had been transferred to the morgue, where an autopsy had been performed and his heart "illegally removed."

"Wrong heart"

Then the remains of the U.S. Marine were shipped to the U.S. After their arrival at Dover military airbase, Delaware, on the east coast, a second autopsy was performed which established that LaLoup’s heart was missing. The parents say they had been aware of this fact two weeks after the funeral of their son.

As they say, they had been officially informed that parts of the skin of the skull were only missing and learnt the tragic truth only when another officer had told it to them "by mistake", in an attempt to justify the position of the authorities, namely that "you cannot tell something like this to a mother mourning for her child."

According to the parents, the authorities had given them the heart but DNA testing had proved that it was not their son’s, although the U.S. Department of Defence and the Greek authorities had claimed the opposite.

"Instead of being honest and frank with the family and doing what was necessary to return the heart, the defendants had decided to lie and hide this fact from the claimants. As a result of the inaction of the defendants, the heart of the Marine was destroyed by the Greek authorities", states the claim.

"Organ trade"

A representative of the Greek Embassy in Washington told The Associated Press that the heart of the Marine had been removed and retained for toxicological analyses, "a practice that is not common," according to doctors referred to by the U.S. media. The representative of the Embassy had not provided more information as to how the "wrong heart" had reached the family. Its fate remains unknown. The BBC claims that the parents have already initiated legal proceedings against the Greek authorities. According to the website philly.com, they are guided by the idea that "the officials in the heavily indebted country of Greece may have harvested the heart of their son for sale in Europe’s notorious underground organ market."

"There was an autopsy done in the Greek hospital. We do not yet know why they took the heart as part of that autopsy. When you remove an organ as a part of an autopsy, you put it back. That did not happen... We do not have absolute confirmation that the heart of this Marine was tested during the autopsy ... And he died from a gunshot wound, so is removing the heart from the corpse a standard autopsy practice in Greece in that situation? There is a big question about that", says the lawyer of the family.