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

The occasion for this note was a report (dated 29.08. 2012) by the non-governmental organization “Citizens’ Union for Human Rights”, which was submitted to the prosecutor of the Areios Pagos, with complaints about the pretrial detention, the inhuman treatment and the continuing public humiliation of Vicky Stamati (and of other unjustly imprisoned persons, who are described as “temporary detainees”).

Vasiliki (Vicky) Stamati was persecuted, according to the report, publicly humiliated and imprisoned (by decision of the investigating judge and the prosecutor) for the sole reason of her capacity as wife of the former super-minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos.

We note that the work of the investigation, conducted by the appointed investigating judge, is the collection of evidentiary material so that, subsequently, it may be judged whether the accused must, according to law, be referred before a criminal court or be discharged because of lack of evidence and lack of the conditions required by law.

The investigating judge must gather the evidence, using all permitted - lawful means, and the use of means that are considered prohibited is forbidden in the conduct of the investigation.

Such means, which are absolutely prohibited, are the exercise of psychological pressure and/or physical violence against the accused, and the extortion of the accused by threatening that harm will come to him or her when the accused does not respond to the “demands” and “pressures” of the investigating judge.

Everything is forbidden that, during the dark years of the Middle Ages, was regarded as lawful within the framework of the investigative and judicial procedure adopted by the Holy Inquisition (with the application of torture and other inhuman methods), as well as by the unfree regimes of raw violence and authoritarianism. The self-incrimination of the accused is also forbidden, that is, the accused may not be compelled to burden himself or herself with his or her own statements and confessions.

The application of the repulsive “principle” that the end justifies the means - even the most base, brutal and immoral means - in order to serve the purposes of the investigation is absolutely excluded. On the contrary, those purposes are achieved only by lawful means and lawful procedures, and not by any manner whatsoever, lawful or unlawful, as happens in the case of Vicky Stamati, against whom medieval methods have been drawn up from the past and are being used against the accused, who has been abused in multiple ways.

Specifically, first, the provision of article 241 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP) was violated, according to which the conduct of the investigation (the entire investigative procedure) is not only written but also secret.

This means that all those who participate, according to the provisions of the law, in the investigation (investigating judge, prosecutor, court clerk and counsel) have the obligation to respect the established and enacted “principle of secrecy”.

According to this principle, it is forbidden to channel to the press and generally to the media material detached from the investigative procedure, obtained because of (and “on the occasion of”) the investigation, or, as happened with the prosecution of Vicky Stamati (but also of other defendants), to scatter to the ends of the State and, through the internet, beyond it, the whole body of material and documents of the secret investigation, as well as the steps of the defence against the charge, in every detail (true or fictional). Nor is it permitted to distribute “press releases” by those participating in the investigative procedure, who have an obligation of confidentiality and of keeping secret investigative material confidential. This obligation rests on investigating judges, prosecutors, counsel and clerks, as well as on anyone else called to assist, such as, for example, technical advisers and experts.

The channelling of material from the investigation to newspapers and generally to the media was the first decisive blow not only against the accused, who is attacked under the successive blows of an irritated and inflamed “public opinion”, directed by the various publications (in their majority negative, mocking and contemptuous), but also against the institution of the investigation itself, which functions not as a guarantor of the lawful collection of untainted evidence and of the protection of individual rights, but as a continuous source of information for the media lying in wait.

Every document of the, according to law, “secret investigation” ends up in newspapers, radio and television stations and blogs, which “take care” of its adapted, continuous reproduction, so that the document becomes titillating and “interesting”, accompanied by “articles” of scandal-hunting content and by huge, misleading headlines intended to attract the attention of citizens (listeners, readers and viewers).

No one is moved, not even the one who bears the primary responsibility for maintaining legality and, together with it, the secrecy of the investigation: the appointed investigating judge. On the contrary, he accepts with favour the violation of the law and the disclosure of all the material and findings of the investigation to journalists. Is this due to inexperience, incompetence, other deficiencies, or expediency? Manifestly, to all of these elements together.

In this specific case (as well as in countless others), no competent or sensitive person cared to protest and demand that the law be observed (with the exception of the “Citizens’ Union for Human Rights”, which addressed the written complaint - protest to the prosecutor of the Areios Pagos), so that the personality of this accused too, who is being pilloried, should not be harmed, and so that the necessary calm should be imposed on the investigative work, which is shaken by the interventions of the media, but even by politicians who do not respect the laws and the principles of democracy.

Credit card receipts, invoices, notes, defence memoranda, pleadings containing requests to the investigating judge and, in general, all documents of the secret investigation are a favourite reading, spectacle or listening matter on the internet. The comments (or abuse!) of the “indignant citizens” against the accused, who cannot defend herself from prison, are distinguished by their content of vulgar insults, extreme characterizations and unappeasable rage!

For the calm observer, the wonder and the question arise: who publicizes the material, all the material, of the investigation? Who has an interest in the din of reactions and the stoking of extreme manifestations, chiefly against the imprisoned woman, and who benefits from the illegality and, worse, from its maintenance? The answer is easy if one thinks that in this case too the supreme good is profiteering, while there can be no discussion (and certainly no serious discussion) about principles, individual rights and social morality in our battered country.

The channelling of investigative material to the media tends to become an endemic phenomenon. Thus the devaluation of the judicial power is intensified; it slides down the same slope as the other powers, the legislative and the administrative, while at least it ought to have preserved prestige and radiance.

The rule-of-law and lawful principle of the secrecy of the investigation was not observed in the present case of the former minister’s wife either.

Yet the major issue is not whether Vicky Stamati in particular is being treated as if we were in the Middle Ages or under a regime of authoritarianism, arbitrariness and violence.

The issue that arises, and that should already be occupying both competent and non-competent persons, is that elementary human rights are being questioned, annulled and violated in the service of other purposes, which have no relation to the administration of Justice (the judicial power is not identical with Justice, but must look toward it and must make it the object of its true struggle for the prevalence of Justice), and to the fair (objective, impartial, dispassionate, lawful, prudent, substantially humane) treatment of the person criminally prosecuted, because of the prosecution brought against the former minister - her husband - and also against herself (because of this capacity, that of the second wife of Akis Tsochatzopoulos).

It seems that society’s reflexes have been blunted, and few refer to Vicky Stamati’s capacity not only as the former minister’s wife but also as the mother of a five-year-old child.

These capacities (of wife and mother) have been pushed aside, and it is astonishing to observe the lack of feeling and reaction not only from the majority, which is under the influence of the media, but also from those institutionally appointed to protect human and democratic rights.

The version that “other mothers of minor children have also lost their liberty” is anything but tolerable. The illegality, that is, the pretrial detention (or the prettified phrase put forward, “temporary detention”) of other weak mothers too, with newborns, infants and minors, cannot justify and, much more, cannot legalize the deprivation of Vicky Stamati’s five-year-old child of his parents.

On the basis of purely legal as well as human criteria, the imprisonment of the former super-minister’s wife should have been avoided, by application of the law (which has crystallized the will of the legislator and of society), according to which pretrial detention is not preferred but constitutes the last, or “ultimate”, and extreme measure of “procedural coercion”. Of course, in our country, with high-sounding expressions (“procedural coercion”, “protection of the prestige of justice”, safeguarding the “independence of justice”), human rights are systematically violated, and indeed the elementary ones, and society slides deeper into the abyss of political and cultural decline, from which exit is probably impossible. Our country has already been stigmatized for the unlawful accumulation in prisons, without trial and without conviction, of multitudes of people (minors, adults, the sick, the very old and, as a rule, the weak, not excluding even those contemptuously characterized as “illegal immigrants”), who are piled up (worse than animals) and suffocate in narrow, sunless cells. A large number of prisoners have not been tried, but have lost their liberty without trial, because of judicial arbitrariness and the lack of consequences against those who impose pretrial detentions on the just and unjust alike, violating the law and their duties.

The former minister’s wife is perhaps the only detainee in our country who, before being thrown into prison, while being ceaselessly mocked, was given as prey to “public opinion”, pilloried and stigmatized as a mother, as a woman and as an accused person.

Consequently, in this case too, the guarantees of a fair trial were abolished, with the rejection even of the elementary right to appoint a psychiatrist - judicial expert, although distinguished specialist psychiatrists have sounded the alarm about the absence of the necessary medical and pharmaceutical care. Given her complete collapse and her transfer, as an “ideal suicide”, to hospital wards and to the walls of the prison.

Of course, the vague and unlawful indictment against her has not been made known to public opinion, nor has the public been informed of the type of the groundless participation of the accused in question in “illegal acts” inconceivable for her, just as the non-existent degree of her knowledge has not been mentioned.

Vicky Stamati, imprisoned without lawful cause and without justification, was not a political person, was not involved in any of the acts of the charge, and her presentation as the supposedly “fatal woman” does not serve the truth, does not support a fair judgment and does not advance the effort to approach the meaning of real Justice, which remains an unattainable dream in the present case as well.

So that not even a trace of doubt might remain regarding the unjust attack against the former minister’s wife, a certain prominent figure of the media, without shame and without right, spread in her writing that supposedly V. Stamati “constitutes a danger to society”, because she is “the Vicky next door”; and she recorded this without pangs of conscience, with malice and spite, aiming directly at her victim, who cannot defend herself from within the prison walls. Defend herself effectively and decisively against this dishonour.

With such monstrous fabrications, an attempt was made to alter the image of the unjustly imprisoned woman, without the decisive reaction of any competent person, with few exceptions, such as that of the former president of the Areios Pagos, Vasilis Kokkinos, who, with articles and statements, demonstrated the unforgivable misstep of the cowardly tormenting of the wife because of this and only this capacity.

V. Stamati is, apart from being a wife, a mother from whom her five-year-old child was torn away with violence and callousness, in a sadistically punitive manner.

Because of this inhuman act, the woman in question fell into utter despair and developed self-destructive tendencies and manifestations, through which she lost even her last strength to resist injustice and illegality by protesting and defending herself effectively. She has been left to her fate and is in complete collapse, emaciated, presenting an image that does not honour our so-called “legal culture” and, beyond that, our judicial power and the mechanisms of enforcement, repression and oppression, which ought not to operate in our country, with its many historical examples and sufferings.

The only thing she expressed, stammering, is that her child will go to the first grade of elementary school without being accompanied by his mother, who is necessarily kept away from him with sadistic cruelty.

The unjustifiably incarcerated V. Stamati is not allowed into the prison yard, is fed under medical support, hears strange sounds, underground music and screams in the corridors of the prison, and, generally and specifically, has been driven to derangement ending in impending insanity, from which there may perhaps be no return.

She has ceased to hope in the justice of human beings, and her hopes have turned toward the transcendent and the divine. From there she awaits help, redemption and vindication.