Unprotected witnesses

The law on protected witnesses has a history similar to that of the Greek state: It's laughable.

At the long-lasting trial of the November 17 terrorist group members that started in March 2003, the law turned into a comedy. The prosecutor read out loud the names of the protected witnesses ("A1" and "B1"), who were seated in the courtroom and shouted, "Present." Other times it ended in tragedy. In June 2009, a police officer guarding a protected witness in the trial of members of the terror group Revolutionary People's Struggle was murdered. In other cases of extortion or loan sharking, the "protected" witnesses were so well protected by the state that they drastically changed their original testimony in court.

But even in the long-running Novartis bribery scandal, it turned out that the witnesses were "protected" only from criminal and/or civil prosecutions. Their...