Greek cops suspended for YouTube video
Sunday, 17 June 2007Three Greek police sergeants were suspended and their captain re-assigned after a video showing two Albanian detainees being beaten up at a central Athens police station appeared on Greek media and websites like YouTube.
The one-year-old video, which was first posted on the internet and then picked up by TV stations this weekend, showed the sergeants ordering the two men to repeatedly slap each other and beating them with their batons.
'Those responsible will get an exemplary punishment', Public Order Minister Byron Polydoras said in a statement on Saturday.
Human rights groups have reported several incidents of Greek police abuse, especially of immigrants or Roma (Gypsies) and the US State Department's human rights report listed several cases in its 2006 report on Greece.
Nearly two million immigrants, mainly from Eastern Europe, have sought a better life in Greece after the collapse of communism.
Greek media reported that a 30-year-old sergeant who joined the police force in 1996 told investigators that he and his colleagues at the central Omonia police station 'were just joking around'.
