(repost from athens indymedia)Greece: "And you shall be named Praetorians... and you shall rule the cities."
"You are the Praetor Urbanus. Blessed by the Lord who gave me the command of a headquarter of such stars and a staff of such worthy individuals."
Viron Polidoras,Minister of Public Order,Chief Commander of Praetorian Cohorts of Parliamentary Democracy
(Praetor Urbanus,otherwise known as "Praetorians" or "Praetoriani" were the elite urban guard of the Roman Empire.The actual meaning of the word is "the Leaders of the City")
That was just the first of a series of statements by the Greek Minister of Public Order, a couple of months ago. as usual noone gave any importance to his words as he is known to be an unstable and disturbed personality. Noone knew what he meant by renaming the Policemen into Praetorians.
There were reports about new methods and unthought brutallity of the Greek Police from last year, like this report after a student march in Athens:
"We are almost certain that the MAT (riot police) are in a process of acting independently, and this is proven by the big hatred and brutality during the student mobilisations. They had entrapped in the Law Department thousands of students, they have beaten especially female students and journalists who were photographing the brutality, they have thrown inside the building chemicals (not just CS but other kinds like mustard and neural gases), there were many unconscious and injured students and only by accident and because of the barricades there was not someone killed! We are certain that they lust for blood." look here
Then there were indications about extreme right wing cops who were controlling the police unions, but the government and the media spoke of isolated cases.
Since September there was a wave of strikes of teachers and students who were dealt quickly by the police. There were cases of beatings, tortures, of policemen entering schools and asking the names of the strikers, of riot cops carrying steel punches to attack the protestors, of new types of cops without any indications (numbers on them) and wearing conventional cascets or hoods etc etc.
for more info here or here
