Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

We often learn from the media that the director of a company has been placed in pre-trial detention for debts to the State, that the defendant accused of fraud was detained after giving testimony before the investigating judge, that a certain lady was detained for attempted homicide.

Placed in pre-trial detention

were (not the politicians, but) the wife and daughters of a man implicated in the “Siemens” scandal, in application of the “collective responsibility” of Nazism and related inhuman methods. The arrest of the accused father’s minor son was averted at the last moment because of popular indignation and public outcry against the young investigating judge. The brother of the romantic partner of the daughter of a left-wing member of parliament was placed in pre-trial detention, because the parliamentarian’s daughter and her partner were drug addicts and were involved in drug trafficking. Those involved in the scandal of fixed football matches were placed in pre-trial detention (except for the vice-president of the Athens Bar Association, who was exempted and continues undaunted to perform the duties of vice-president of the A.B.A. and of member of the disciplinary council of the same association) and, most recently, we were informed of the pre-trial detention of Elder Ephraim, abbot of the Vatopedi Monastery, who has been accused for some years of fraud against the State and in favor of his monastery. But are these imprisonments or “pre-trial detentions” lawful? For what reason are they imposed and by whom? These questions require substantiated answers, which the competent authorities do not deign to give or, when they see fit to give them, are either truncated, inadequate and overflowing with pharisaism and pretence, with references to “Greek justice” and to its supposedly untouchable character. The pharisees of politics and the scribes of judicial power owe responsible answers and must explain the reasons why certain citizens, exceptionally, named and unnamed alike, are deprived of the most precious human good and right, namely their freedom, while others, although accused of committing the gravest crimes mainly against the homeland, never pass through the gates of “our” wretched prisons. In our country, pre-trial detention, as a preventive measure against perpetrators of serious crimes, is used against the weak and against the current political opponents of the powerful. Thus, with inhumanity and insolence, a member of parliament from one of the so-called “parties of power”, chairman of the committee on the Vatopedi case, declared himself “vindicated” and therefore satisfied by the pre-trial detention of the elderly abbot! You see the callousness, emotional numbness and hardening with which socially prominent and powerful people externalize their complex-ridden satisfaction before the tragic event of depriving someone (whom they target as their opponent, that is, as an opponent of their party faction) of the most precious human good, the invaluable good of freedom. The expression of “satisfaction” by the chairman of the parliamentary committee on Vatopedi shows, however, that the barbaric and unlawful measure of pre-trial detention is truly used selectively for purposes other than those for which it was legislated. According to the law, pre-trial detention is an exceptional measure imposed only in extraordinary circumstances, when other means cannot be used (such as monetary bail, appearance at a police station at regular intervals and a ban on leaving the country). Its purpose is to secure the defendant’s presence during the investigation and, above all, before the competent court, if and when he is referred to trial. Until referral to trial and until an irrevocable conviction is issued against him, the defendant is absolutely protected by the so-called presumption of innocence. That is, he is presumed (considered) innocent until convicted by an irrevocable judicial decision, namely when the convicting decision can no longer be challenged by legal remedies. The presumption of innocence is a fundamental individual right, because it is provided for by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which has applied throughout the European Union and also in our little state since 01.12.2009. With the continuous, unlawful and barbaric pre-trial detentions against political opponents of the powerful and against the weak, foreigners and the sick, our society tolerates the violation of fundamental and inviolable human rights, provoking the anger of civilized states, of the West and the East. That anger is directed indiscriminately against all Greeks, and our country, already receiving criticism and fire from every direction, is defamed. Most investigating judges impose pre-trial detentions without examining the conditions and despite efforts to obstruct this difficult-to-explain practice, which raises questions about the ability and training of the officers of judicial power. Because of unlawful and unjustified pre-trial detentions, it is observed that (a) our country, in proportion to its population, maintains the largest number of pre-trial detainees compared with all countries of the European Union, eastern and western, (b) pre-trial detentions as a rule last until the maximum time limit, which is eighteen months, (c) when the eighteen-month period of pre-trial detention is close to being completed, the aim of the court trying the main case is not to conduct the trial according to procedural rules, fairly and comfortably, but to finish the trial somehow before the eighteen months are completed, because the judges are threatened with disciplinary consequences for violation of the eighteen-month limit and the impending release of the defendants, (d) when many of those unjustly detained are acquitted, they turn against the State and receive significant compensation, which, however, is not paid by those who imposed the detention, judges and prosecutors, but by the State from the loans of international usurers, and (e) citizens lose confidence in judicial power and in its ability to issue fair decisions and judgments. Most people regard judicial power as an enemy that must be confronted by every means. For the imposition of unjust, unjustified and unlawful pre-trial detentions, judicial and prosecutorial officers are responsible in their majority, because, as appears from the periodic announcements of their trade-union bodies, their representatives and individual members, they wish and prefer to place defendants in pre-trial detention. This tendency is due to the fact that, by imposing pre-trial detentions without control, those who impose them feel the pleasure of force and power, as happens in all underdeveloped societies, and, moreover, they do not run the risk of disciplinary review. So that the humiliation of our country caused by unjust, unlawful and unjustified mass pre-trial detentions does not continue, the competent authorities (of judicial, legislative and executive power) must immediately take all measures required by the circumstances. Our society must become more humane, more civilized and enter the century in which we live, through the immediate prohibition of pre-trial detentions (which should be ordered as an exceptional measure, in very few cases and when there is no other way), through the acceleration of trial scheduling and the protection of the citizen from pointless prosecutions, through the ending of the criminalization of all manifestations of social life and through the exclusion of judicial arbitrariness.