Penology

Police have arrested an escaped convict who was serving a life sentence for the murder of a businessman on the island of Mykonos.

The arrest was made on Monday in an apartment in the Athens suburb of Kallithea.

A former basketball coach who had been convicted for sexually molesting 36 boys on the island of Crete has been released from prison after a decision by the Misdemeanor Council of Grevena in northern Greece.

The Council of State, the Court of Auditors and the country's regular administrative courts will reopen on June 1, but criminal courts will wait until after June 21, according to a joint ministerial decision published by the Ministry of Justice on Friday.

The UN's special rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, Fabian Salvioli, said on Wednesday that measures to protect against COVID-19 in overcrowded jails should not lead to amnesties or pardons being granted to people convicted of serious violations of human rights, crimes against humanity, genocide or war crimes.

The release of thousands of prisoners started early April 15 after a law lowering the time limits on conditional release was approved by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and published on the Official Gazette.

Three inmates out of 17 infected in open prisons were killed from the novel coronavirus, the justice minister has said, as parliament is continuing discussions on a bill that would release around 90,000 prisoners in a bid to ease the conditions in jails amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Russian officials said a large fire was blazing on April 10 at a prison in Siberia where inmates and guards have clashed.

There was no official information about casualties or damage at the prison in Angarsk, 4,000 kilometers east of Moscow.

The Justice Ministry has prepared a plan that is designed to oversee the release of some 90,000 inmates from the country's prisons under a bill, which seeks making amendments in the criminal execution law.

The bill, which was recently submitted to parliament, is part of the wider measures the government has taken in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

A riot erupted at Eleonas' Womens' Prison in central Greece on Thursday morning after a woman whom detainees suspected of being infected with the new coronavirus died earlier in the day.

The prisoners burned mattresses and called for immediate measures to protect their health and reduce overcrowding.

The government has drafted a plan foreseeing the early release of up to 1,500 inmates in a bid to ease congestion in Greek prisons and lessen the chances of transmission of the coronavirus.