George Zoupanos: Mistrial, October 2015
It looks like a single day has not passed, yet it’s eight years that have passed since then. Those who remember the struggle that broke out in 2007 for free beaches in Ellinikon and enforcement of legality towards the nightclubs of the area, had the unpleasant surprise to witness in the courtroom the revival of a regime that continues to react allergically to the citizen’s assertions, blocks the attribution of justice and lives for the moment that it will achieve to equate the victim with the perpetrator.
George Zoupanos, renowned professor of the National Technical University of Athens at the faculty of Applied Mathematical and Physical sciences was forced to experience such an equation. His academic distinctions are widely known– yet then he chose not to remain at his academic research but to join his fellow citizens and support the struggles against the encroachment of Ellinikon’s beaches from nightclubs.
On May 25 of 2008, a crowd of people went to the beach which was no longer surrounded by a metal fence since the year before, to help clean it up before the arrival of summer. Later they followed the local authority, which went to seal once more a next-door nightclub, which continued to operate despite the justice judgment. As a result, Professor Zoupanos was to be found on the ground, struck on his head and his body and then having to accept an anti - lawsuit by the coordinator of the violent attack against him. Having reached September 28, 2015, after repeated postponements, a First Instance Court imposed the same penalty to Professor Zoupanos as the one imposed on the offender.
What preceded the trial, such as the continuous loss of the evidence adduced by Zoupanos side, could predict the result. But it was the process on its own that made visible the abhorrent face of a Justice which constantly loses temper, prohibits questions to the witnesses ignoring demonstratively the characteristics of their personality and does not accept the evidence.
The physical injuries suffered by the 58 years old NTUA professor at that time, as well as the war climate prevailing in the mobilization were recorded in detail at press reports and broadcasted on the main television news of ERT. Despite the massive visual material (video and photos), the police failed to find any of those responsible, while the other party against whom Mr. Zoupanos filed a criminal complaint, retaliated by filing a complaint, apparently for procedural defense.
The hearing was postponed countless times. During this time the loss of the file containing Zoupanos evidences, which was also lacking at the process of September 28, was found out three times. The video showing the professor being harassed, was reintroduced, as also the photographs and the medical certificates but the President of the Court did not accept them. The Court President himself had allergic reactions to any reference to the illegal status of the beach and prohibited a series of questions that Gianna Kourtovik, G. Zoupanos advocate, wanted to submit.
He was expelling and then forced to recall witnesses when forced to admit contradictions and gaps. He tried to limit the number of the professor’s defense witnesses while he pushed twice G. Kourtovik on the verge of quitting. He was hammering his hands on the stand as if he heard things he did not like, as the reason why hundreds of people had gathered on the beach. He insulted witnesses like the former mayor of Ellinikon - Argiroupolis Christos Kortzidis and showed discomfort when he heard of executives of the Left who were present at the event (Th. Dritsas, G. Mpanias). He did not react to obvious perjury and changes in the narrative of prosecution witnesses against G. Zoupanos, as to how a 58 years old professor with white criminal record managed to break the double dragnet of the police and the nightclub’s people without being recorded in the visual material that was provided by them. Apparently, the goal was to vindicate the man of the nightclub, who appeared after repeated postponements with such confidence that he did not even have an advocate to defend his side, nor presented medical certificates for the alleged injury. In other words, to equate the aggressor with the victim.
(translation of text that appeared in the Greek press, written by eyewitnesses and colleagues which were present during the trial)
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