Greek police officers charged with torturing detainee

Five police officers in Greece have been suspended and are being charged with torturing a detainee. This is not about water-boarding, it's a about how torture can be defined

Greece has English language news agencies, papers and magazines, and one of these - Kathimerini - has reported that five police officers have been suspended and are now being charged with "abuse of power" and "torturing a detainee". In fact, the online version of Kathimerini clearly states that only two of the officers have actually beaten the detainee, a foreign national, yet that the other three officers are charged with the same crime because they watched it happen and did not interfere. Unthinking abuse of power like in this case does, perhaps, occur in every country and in many a setting where the Us and Them plays a major role, yet the truly interesting fact about this incident is the speech given by a Greek Minister and how he defines terrorism. Not only did Citizens’ Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis express outrage that a “group of officers without consciences turned a migrant detainee into a punching bag”, he also added that

“torture and the violation of human decency are signs of barbarism that denigrate the rule of law, democracy and the values of Greek society.”