Former President Christos Sartzetakis passes

Christos Sartzetakis, born in 1929, passed away today at the age of 93 after a long hospitalization.

He was born in Neapoli, Thessaloniki in 1929. His father, who was serving as a Gendarmerie officer in Thessaloniki - where he met his mother - was a Cretan, having been born in Kandanos, Chania, while his mother, who was born in Sklithro, Florina, was a Greek Macedonian.

He entered the Law Faculty of the University of Thessaloniki in 1946, and received his degree in 1950, after which he practised law in Thessaloniki. In 1954 he received his license to practice law after successfully completing the bar examination. In November 1955, he was named Justice of the Peace. A year later, he became a magistrate of the Court of First Instance.

He was the unyielding prosecutor in the sensational case of the assassination of the left-wing member of Parliament (and 'doctor of the poor') Grigoris Lambrakis, committed on 22 May 1963 in Thessaloniki by right-wing extremists. Lambrakis had called for Greece to disarm and withdraw from NATO. Over half a million people attended his funeral. Despite obstruction of justice by his superiors, Sartzetakis doggedly pursued his investigation to the end. He succeeded in convicting the police officers involved in the murder; they were later rehabilitated by the Greek military junta of 1967-1974.

The circumstances of the Lambrakis investigation was the theme of the well-known 1966 novel Z by Vassilis Vassilikos, and Sartzetakis was portrayed by Jean-Louis Trintignant in the novel's 1969 film adaptation by Costas Gavras.

After the Lambrakis prosecution, Sartzetakis left for Paris on a state-sponsored educational leave to study comparative law at the Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Économiques de Paris and the...