Athens
Hundreds of people took to the streets on Tuesday to protest against the police violence in Athens, a day after a 16-year-old was shot in a police pursuit. The protests were part of the annual commemorations which were planned in major cities of Greece to mark the death of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos who was fatally shot by police in 2008.
At that time, youth protests were sparked in major cities by his death. The police said that around 600 protestors took part in one of the demonstrations on Tuesday in Athens.
The government deployed around 4,000 police in the capital city on Tuesday as tension escalated after Monday's shooting.
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A 16-year-old Roma boy was shot by a police motorcyclist on Monday in the second city of Greece Thessaloniki after he fled from a petrol station without making payment.
The teenager was taken to the hospital in critical condition. In Athens, one of the protesters carried a banner which referred to the unpaid petrol bill worth â¬20 or USD21.
"A life is worth â¬20," it stated. The police officer was arrested under the charge of attempted manslaughter after the incident.
The Greek police department, in its defence, stated that the youth was trying to evade arrest and in his doing so, had tried to ram officers who were pursuing him on motorbikes.
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On Tuesday, objects were thrown by a group of Roma at riot police outside the Thessaloniki courts. Meanwhile, bins were set on fire by another group on a major highway in Athens.
Frequent claims have been made about police in Greece being poorly trained. While speaking to TV ERT on Tuesday, a senior police unionist said that the officer who had killed the teenager is a 14-year veteran.
Roma, a colloquial term for the Romani, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants who live in Europe and Anatolia, and have diaspora populations located worldwide, with significant concentrations in the Americas.
(With inputs from agencies)