George Gilson

 

LIKE a general who has just won a significant battle, Michalis Chrisochoidis was still clearly pumped up with adrenalin and self-confidence when he described the police handling of the marches marking the first anniversary of the police shooting of schoolboy Alexandros Grigoropoulos. 

 

 “The summing up is absolutely positive,” Chrisochoidis told the Athens News in an interview on December 8. But his assessment is based on a comparison with last year’s disaster, when the spontaneous combustion from Grigoropoulos’ shooting triggered two weeks of riots nationwide

The killing and the handling of the riots was disastrous for the reputation of the previous government.

 

“Last year, 600 shops, 300 bank branches and hundreds of cars were destroyed. This year we have absolutely nothing. We are a government that has decided to expand human freedoms while battling lawlessness at the same time,” Chrisochoidis continues.

 

 

Rejecting charges by leftwing Syriza that mass preventive detention of citizens is illegal, the minister says that authorities struck the right balance between security and civil liberties. “Last year, there were 1,600 detentions, but this year half that. Last year 200 policemen were injured, but this year only 26. Last year 300 citizens were injured, but this year only one. That’s the difference,” he says. 

 

Asked about the profile of those detained and arrested, Chrisochoidis said he does not deal with such issues.

 

Still, there were widespread charges of police excesses. The minister says all charges will be thoroughly probed by a new complaints bureau. 

 

 “On the issue of human rights, civil liberties and combating police violence, the Pasok government will be very strict. But it will be equally strict in fighting lawlessness,” he said. “Lawlessness is over in this country!”

 

When police recently abused a foreign woman and her child, the minister immediately suspended the officer. Not so with the policeman who was caught on video driving his motorcycle into a woman marcher on December 7. 

 

Chrisochoidis dismisses the comparison between the two incidents: “There we had a cold-blooded, violent act. Here we are probing if the act was on purpose to injure the protester, or an accident. These policemen were driving to save a colleague whose life was endangered.”

 

 

As for the attack on Athens University Rector Christos Kittas, Chrisochoidis blamed university authorities for forbidding police from coming in. “The next day they sent a document saying surrounding streets are public spaces, so police went,” he says. 

 

“We do not support abolishing asylum, but we support enforcing the law,” he explains, and agrees with the decision of prosecutors not to order police to enter the campus. However, he adds: “I think we should decide as a society what we want to do with asylum.”

 

Chrisochoidis also defends the raid on the Resalto anti-authority hangout in Keratsini, blasts Syriza for its critical stance and believes the operation and others like it “averted very many attacks”. 

Furthermore, he states: “Syriza is lying about this [charge that a prosecutor was not on hand]. Syriza has learned to tell a lot of lies over the years, without anyone answering back.”

 

The minister denies that he has a vendetta with Syriza - “a legal party never identified with illegal acts” - and says Syriza’s stance is contradictory.

 

 “They criticise us for entering Resalto, but Manolis Glezos [a leftwing political icon and Syriza member] criticises us for not entering the university [grounds], which would abolish the asylum,” the minister explains.

 

In a statement on December 6, Glezos asked: “Why did police on the one hand allow hooded youth to break the door of Athens University undisturbed, take down the Greek flag and assault the rector, while on the other hand present as felony evidence bottles and the shell of a used stun grenade in a haunt of young intellectual in Keratsini, which has operated for 10 years and publishes a newspaper?”

 

Following the Resalto raid, the felony charge of participating in a criminal gang was dropped. Chrisochoidis dismisses the idea that the dropping of the charge may be linked to the fact that two of the 22 arrested were children of Pasok MP Grigoris Niotis. “The Pasok government does not do such things. The judiciary decided,” he contends. 

 

Chrisochoidis explains his recent statements that Greek terrorists today are closely linked to common criminals. 

 “I believe they are organs of organised crime. They are collaborating with organised crime. Their aim is to bring a greater breakdown, to stir a climate of illegality and exact revenge against the state,” he asserts, adding that “the one group seeks revenge through violence and hatred and the other because they are in prison and cannot commit crimes”.

 

Asked whether authorities have evidence on terrorists that could lead to arrests, or that terror groups are Mafia fronts, the minister declines to go into details, saying instead: “Slowly, we will answer these questions. We are moving in that direction.” 

 

Regarding the probe of the October 27 attack on the Agia Paraskevi police precinct, for which no group has claimed responsibility, Chrisochoidis says that progress is slow but “we are structuring the evidence through our investigation”.

 

 

As public order minister in 2002, Chrisochoidis had said the 17N terror group was rooted out, but recently he reopened the case and suggested members may still be at large.

 

“There is some evidence that should be investigated [reportedly discovered in 2005], to be matched with guilty people,” he admits, stressing, however, that the evidence did not come from US authorities, which have long spoken of 17N members at large: “Not once have foreign law enforcement agencies offered a shred of evidence on these [terrorism] issues.”

 

Regarding the December 3 appellate court acquittal of all three individuals charged as members of the defunct Revolutionary Popular Struggle (ELA) terror group, Chrisochoidis states firmly there are no plans to reopen the case now: “I am not involving myself in the issue. The judiciary decided. If there is new evidence, we will review it.”