A Greek policeman was wounded in the head Tuesday evening, during clashes which broke out in a suburb of Athens on the sidelines of a demonstration of 5000 people against the "
police abuses
", announced the police.
Read also: Greece: nine arrests after violence during a demonstration in Athens
According to a photographer from, the scuffles started when a group of around 200 hooded people headed towards the police station in Nea Smyrni, a supposedly quiet suburb of Athens, where a young man was beaten with batons on Sunday. by a police officer during a control of containment measures.
The thugs threw stones and molotov cocktails at the police station and the police responded with tear gas and water cannons.
A dozen garbage cans were set on fire, forcing firefighters to intervene, AFP noted.
A policeman on a motorcycle, seriously injured in the head, had to be taken to hospital, according to the police.
According to ANT1 TV footage, protesters knocked the policeman off his motorcycle and beat him.
Journalists and photographers on the spot were also taken to task by hooded demonstrators, we note.
Sunday afternoon in the square of Nea Smyrni, five kilometers from downtown Athens, the images of a young man on the ground beaten with a baton by a police officer, in the presence of at least three other officers, have gone viral.
The young man can be heard shouting: "
I'm in pain
", while passers-by are indignant at the behavior of the police.
In protest, nearly 5,000 people, according to the police, marched against the "
police excesses
" Tuesday evening, waving banners on which one could read "
The cops out of our neighborhoods
" or "
The parks are made for laughs and not for hear: I'm in pain
”.
According to the police, this incident started when the police were attacked by "
thirty people who caused injuries to two of its agents
", which many residents of Nea Smyrni denied.
Eleven people arrested on Sunday were prosecuted for "
assault and battery, insults and violations of measures to contain the Covid-19 epidemic
", we learned Tuesday from a judicial source.