A police raid in the lawless mini-republic of Zoniana ends yet again in a fiasco. One cop wounded, another one slapped, and orchards of cannabis plants discretely removed.
Four years after the ambush in Zoniana, resulting in three policemen wounded, one critically, little has changed. On Friday night, in a large-scale raid, 50 policemen found an orchard of cannabis but decided not to take action due to the fact that there was a wedding taking place at the central square of the village. Early on Saturday morning, policemen went again looking for the orchard, but surprise-surprise, there was nothing to be found!
Growers had destroyed the orchards and left no trace whatsoever. Police blocked the village and started conducting searches in order to target the growers. Zoniana inhabitants started booing the police (they do that often, it’s like a Zonian hobby). At that time, a thirty-three year old with a Kalashnikov in hand with two others, tried to get away in a car. A policeman got wounded and other policemen started firing against the car.
The whole incident wouldn’t really stand out, except the police chief of the Milopotamos area, slapped one of his subordinates in order to stop him from arresting the thirty-three year old Kalashnikov-owner who had just escaped the blockage! An investigation is being conducted under the prosecutor’s supervision in order to clear up what really happened between police, the villagers and the police chief and his subordinate.
The whole incident, provoked once more the usual discussion about state tolerance towards Cretan mafia and the peculiar asylum granted in Milopotamos region, a forty minute drive from one of the biggest Greek cities, Heraklion.
The state of lawlessness and Mafia-style crime in Zoniana, a village which has a population of some 1,600, raises doubts about whether the Greek government is capable of simply accomplishing the basics, let alone all those ambitious reforms George Papandreou promises his European counterparts!
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