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Doctors face life sentence over Greek pop star's death / Photo: © AFP
Doctors face life sentence over Greek pop star's death
Doctors at a clinic where a major Greek pop star died last week in a blood cleaning treatment could face life in prison after prosecutors on Monday upgraded the charges against them.
Police on Monday said the pair, who are a couple, tried to hide evidence after Giorgos Mazonakis died of cardiac arrest on September 9 during a plasma exchange appointment.
The suspects, who are in police custody, are scheduled to answer a charge of manslaughter with possible intent, which carries a possible maximum 20-year sentence.
"We are trying to determine the way in which the two accused, or whoever else may have been involved... essentially attempted to hide important details in the investigation," police spokeswoman Konstantia Dimoglidou told ERT News Radio.
"The digital evidence refutes what the two accused said in their testimony," she said.
The pathologist who ran the clinic and his wife, who was registered a non-specialist doctor, deny any responsibility and insist Mazonakis lost consciousness before the treatment began.
Several officials have stated that plasma exchange is a complicated and occasionally risky procedure that requires a full medical team.
The Athens medical association (ISA) has said the clinic was registered as pathology practise and was therefore not entitled to carry out plasma exchange.
The clinic "illegally had two plasma exchange devices" and one of them had been operating for 42 minutes while Mazonakis was there, senior ISA official Polytimi Leonardou, who inspected the premises, told ERT TV.
Originally employed to treat disorders such as multiple sclerosis, plasma exchange has increasingly been used as an anti-ageing and longevity treatment.
The Greek health ministry has admitted there is no framework governing anti-ageing clinics in the country.
"We must find the gaps in the system," Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis told reporters outside the cemetery where Mazonakis was buried Monday.
Mazonakis, 54, was one of Greece's best-known pop stars, with multiple hits and platinum albums to his name during a career spanning over three decades.
He was scheduled to stage a retrospective concert in Athens on September 20.
Thousands of people including many showbiz stars flocked to a church vigil late Sunday in his home neighbourhood of Nikaia, west Athens.
J.L. de Oliveira--JDB
