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Kremena Koutsoukou

At 9:00 o’clock this morning in small town Amfissa in central Greece starts the long-awaited trial against the policemen Epaminondas Korkoneas and Vasilis Saraliotis who were accused of the murder of 15 years old Alexandros Grigoropoulos. The tension in the town is growing while waiting for a large demonstration set for this afternoon in the center of Amfissa. In the evening before the day of the trial the streets of the town are empty and the citizens have gone home. The few people I met on the streets are sharing their fears related to this evening’s and tomorrow’s events. They are hoping for a normal atmosphere.

There is reinforced police presence in the town already. According to information from the police department there are 400 policemen here and in order to prevent riots will also help special forces units. The head of the police announced that all necessary measures have been taken to secure the safety of the province. A check up is being made to every car at all three entrances of the town. The trade union of Amfissa has decided that the shops will stay opened. Nevertheless the branches of banks and shops have taken measures against hooligans and have closed with metal bars their windows. Students from the two high schools and two junior high schools in the town not to show up in class in order to take part in the demonstrations.

According to unofficial information the mother of the Alexis, who was shot last year on December 6^th – Jina Tsalikian will not attend the trial. She will be represented by her lawyers. It is expected that the lawyer of the defendants Alexis Kugias will ask for a discontinuance of the trial, which means that if his request is accepted after the beginning of tomorrow’s sitting the trial will be discontinued for a term announced by the judge and then continued in the same court members.

In the past week Jina Tsalikian asked the Prime Minister not to get involved in the trial. She sent letters to George Papandreou and to the public prosecutor form the Supreme Court Ioannis Tente asking again for the trial to be held in Athens, not in Amfissa. In the letters she was talking again about the difficulties of the family to travel to the province. The only way to travel from Athens to Amfissa is to take a bus from Liosion station. It covers the distance of 200 km for three and a half hours and it arrives to the Itea village. The second buss covers another 13 km for another 20 minutes. That is way under normal meteorological conditions whoever wants to follow the trial has to travel for about 4 hours.  

In her letter to the public prosecutor Ioannis Tente, Mrs. Tsalikian announces also for negligence and mistakes made at the time of the preliminary investigation and she asks for these mistakes and negligence not to be continued at the trial on January 20^th. More specifically Mrs. Tsalikian talks about the fact that the investigation never looked at the possibility of committing another attempt for murder of the student N.R., who testified that the defendant Epaminondas Korkoneas “shot at him”. Police never looked for the second bullet shot by Korkoneas. Also the official record of the defendants was never looked at in order to see if they have any disciplinary penalties and to make their personal assessment. According to Mrs. Tsalikian the choice of Amfissa for a place to hold the trial created many questions one of which is why the prosecutor never called important witnesses.