New incidents between protesters and police took place this Monday night in Thessaloniki, Greece, during a demonstration in support of a 16-year-old boy from the Roma community who was seriously injured by a policeman’s shots.
Protesters burned barricades and threw Molotov cocktails at riot forces, who responded by firing tear gas and stun grenades. Protesters also smashed shop windows in the center of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city in the north of the country.
A few hours earlier, a first demonstration of dozens of gypsies gathered in front of the hospital where the young man was operated on had also been dotted with clashes with riot police who responded by throwing stones with tear gas.
A “cold-blooded attack committed by the police”
The young man was hospitalized after a police officer opened fire on him during a nightly chase from Sunday to Monday around midnight Paris time. The young gypsy had fled without paying a bill of 20 euros at a service station whose owner had notified the police.
In their statement, the police say that “the driver was performing dangerous maneuvers” and “attempted to hit the police motorcycles.”
“Faced with immediate danger, officers used a firearm (firing two shots) in an attempt to immobilize the vehicle, causing the driver to lose control, crash into a wall and be taken to hospital with serious injuries,” indicates this text.
It is an attack “in cold blood committed by the police. The boy did not take any action that would justify such an action on the part of the police,” the lawyer for the young gypsy family, Théofilos, Alexopoulos, told the media.
The police officer who fired the shots has been arrested and is due to appear before the prosecution on Tuesday morning. Police also said that he had been fired and an investigation had been opened.
Source: BFM TV
