After two participants in Thessaloniki’s gay pride were pushed into the Thermaic Gulf, the head of Thessaloniki’s lower court prosecutor’s office, Lambros Tsogas, has ordered a preliminary investigation into the incident based on the ant-racist law, which implies a hate crime.

Tsogas has ordered lower court prosecutor Athina Konstantinidou to conduct an emergency investigation to determine whether there were acts that warrant immediately prosecutable crimes, such as attempted homicide, attempted dangerous bodily harm, and unprovoked invective, under the law on racist violence.

According to the prosecutor’s order, Thessaloniki’s state security police must probe possible racist (hate crime) motivations for the attack, and must use every legal technological means to arrest the perpetrators.

The attack occurred on the afternoon of 23 June, on the Thessaloniki seashore, near the famed White Tower.

Eyewitnesses said that the culprits approached the victims when they realised they were participating in the Gay Pride, and pushed them one after the other into the gulf.

Witnesses said the culprits threatened the lives of the victims and hurled invective at them. The Coast Guard was called to retrieve the two victims – one Greek and another an Italian of Brazilian background – from the Thermaic Gulf.

While the Coast Guard initially undertook the investigation, the case was then treated as a hate crime, and so a probe was launched by the racist violence bureau of Thessaloniki’s state security police.

Ειδήσεις Σήμερα: