Squatting

Citizen Protection Minister Mihalis Chrysohoidis said the downtown district of Exarchia, where police has been conducting a series of raids to clear squats and arrest drug traffickers, will be "handed back to its residents" by the end of March.

Commenting a day after a government minister called for tough charges against anarchists evicted from squats in Koukaki over the weekend, the head of the Athens prosecutor's office, Evangelos Ioannidis, said that the evidence submitted to judicial officials by police justified misdemeanor charges, not felonies.

In the wake of the controversy that followed a police operation to empty two squats in Koukaki over the weekend, State Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis said on Monday that evicted squatters who hurled blocks of concrete and other projectiles at officers should face felony rather than misdemeanor charges.

The head of Athens' Proseutors office Evangelos Ioannidis on Tuesday pushed back against accusations that the misdemeanor charges filed against twenty people arrested last Saturday in an operation to remove anarchists from two squats in central Athens were too lenient.

A police operation was underway on Saturday to remove anarchists from two recently evacuated squats in the district of Koukaki in central Athens.

The buildings on 45 Matrozou and 21 Panetolikou Streets had been cleared by riot police in a sweeping operation on December 18 last year, but anarchists returned on Saturday afternoon, according to media reports.

Self-styled anarchists on Monday occupied the Greek Consulate in Berlin to express solidarity with squatters in Athens where police have in recent weeks been cracking down on occupied buildings. 

A group of around 15 people occupied the office, hanging a black banner out of the windows reading "Solidarity with the squats" alongside the anarchist symbol. 

The events that transpired during a riot police raid in the district of Koukaki on Wednesday morning to clear a squat were further blurred on Thursday after people claiming to be the occupants of the building targeted said the family members who were eventually arrested had nothing to do with their squat.

Police officers are seen entering an occupied building in the Athens neighborhood of Koukaki, one of three squats cleared early on Sunday. Nine people - seven Greeks and two foreign nationals - were arrested. Among those detained were two men and their father who were in a building that the police entered to gain access to one of the squats and who allegedly attempted to stop the officers.

A father and his two sons who were arrested during a police raid on anarchist squats in the downtown Athens district of Koukaki on Wednesday were taken to hospital from police custody.

Citizens' Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis on Wednesday responded to a letter from jurist and academic Nikos Alivizatos, who heads a committee established by the minister to monitor police behavior, regarding allegations of police brutality during a crackdown on anarchist squats in the downtown Athens district of Koukaki earlier in the day.