Citizen Protection minister pushes the situation to its limits

Papoutsis also referred to the video that shows three crowbar-wielding men being helped to escape by the police inside the parliament courtyard. He underlined that, “I asked to watch it and when seeing it realized that I knew one more man who was together with the other three. I called him and aksed what he had actually been doing there and who the other three persons were. He told me they were our policemen. Instantly, I asked for the incident to be looked into and all necessary action was taken through the night.   

The truth is that for now, the search remains incomplete. As for the assailants, it seems they were attacked by the infuriated masses, went into a coffee shop so as to be safer and finally called the police to get them out of their hiding place, thus securing their wellbeing”.

As the conditions under which the incident happened remain unclear, the search continues. The three men said that the crowbars they were wielding were parts of “metal shelves from inside the cafeteria”.  

What is more, the minister spoke about the video footage showing the attack on PASOK MP Alekos Athanasiadis, asking for people who know more to come forward and share with the police the information they have.  Moreover, responding to accusations which speak of hooded men being used by police to cause unrest among the crowd, he said that “the police have 55,000 syndicate members. Until now, no such complaints have been made”, reassuring everyone that as long as George Papandreou is behind the wheel, there will be no such phenomena. 

Concerning the suffocating atmosphere in downtown Athens, Papoutsis stated that to a great extent, it was caused by smoke bombs used by protesters and not by the police. “It is easy for an experienced person to distinguish smoke bombs from police tear gas”, he added.  

As for the people who had found refuge inside the Syntagma metro station and complained about the suffocating atmosphere, the minister said that only few of them had breathing problems and were all taken to hospital. “Most of them”, said Papoutsis, “used the place as a rest area and although they were asked by the metro workers to leave, they insisted on staying there”.