A policeman was found beaten and tied up in Nikea early on Thursday after a raid on an apartment where Pakistani nationals live.

According to police sources, someone notified police shortly before 4:00 a.m. and said he heard loud voices from this apartment. Police officers rushed to the apartment, where they were attacked by a group of Pakistani nationals. As soon as the police officers immobilized their attackers, they found a colleague of theirs in the apartment who was severely injured and unable to speak.

The policeman was admitted to the 401 General Military Hospital of Athens, while police are investigating the incident.

INTERNAL AFFAIRS TO INVESTIGATE THE CASE

The Hellenic Police Internal Affairs Department will conduct an investigation into the beating of a 34-year-old police officer, who was found tied up in an apartment in Nikaia early on Thursday morning.

“The case will be fully investigated. All possibilities are being examined. There is something ‘off’ about this story,” police sources told the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA).

When rescued by colleagues responding to a call made to the police emergency number, the police officer in question claimed that he had approached his assailants in the early hours of Thursday, at a time when he was off duty, because he had seen a group of people shouting and acting suspiciously and suspected them of trafficking in contraband goods. According to his story, when he told them he was a police officer they had set on him and started to beat him.

He also claimed to have followed the culprits when they entered an apartment building, at which point they cornered him and held him. Another three people then came out of an apartment and also started to hit him, after which they used a sheet to tie him to a chair.

The officer, who had to be taken by ambulance to the 401 Athens General Military Hospital for treatment to his injuries, was rescued by a DIAS police team that arrived at 4:00 in the morning, responding to a call made by a concerned neighbour. When the DIAS police team arrived they were also attacked by a group of Pakistanis, whom they managed to subdue, and entered the apartment to find more foreign nationals inside, as well as their 34-year-old colleague.

The house in Nikea where a policeman was found beaten and tied. (Photo by Eurokinissi/Stelios Misinas)