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Officers hurt in cannabis farm shootout in Greece |
IRAKLION, Greece: A Greek police officer was in critical condition yesterday after a cannabis plantation shootout on the island of Crete in which two other officers were also injured, local police said.
The three officers had been monitoring the illegal plantation near the island capital of Iraklion for three days but were apparently surprised by a lone gunman armed with a Kalashnikov rifle on Sunday evening, police said.
One of the officers was shot in the head. The others were hit in the collar bone and shin respectively.
The incident occurred seven months after three officers were injured in another anti-drugs raid in the mountainous village of Zoniana, west of Iraklion.
Around 50 police in a jeep convoy were heading towards Zoniana in November for a drug-related house search when around 10 gunmen opened fire outside the village.
The government responded with a massive police manhunt and a house-by-house search of the area but few of the heavy firearms believed to have been used in the ambush were ever found.
Sixteen people were arrested in relation with the ambush and a string of bank robberies on the island in which entire cash dispensers were uprooted with the use of heavy farm machinery.
Greek media subsequently noted that Zoniana was a “state within a state” and a kind of “Greek Colombia” on an island where gun ownership was already rife and seen as a badge of pride.
Local politicians are often accused of helping to cover up such cases by leaning on police and judicial officials.
A senior Cretan politician and adviser to Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis will be tried in September for allegedly attempting to persuade two officers to alter their testimony on another narcotics case. – AFP |
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