The European Court of Human Rights has found Greece guilty of violating freedom of expression by convicting the daily I Avgi and its editor, Konstantinos Karis, of libel in 2003 for describing former journalist Kyriakos Velopoulos as a “known out-an-out nationalist” in a June 2000 article, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported.
Velopoulos, who was elected last year as a parliamentary representative of Popular Orthodox Alert, a party that defends Greco-Christian ideals, sued I Avgi for questioning his role in organising a far-right rally in Thessalonika in protest against a refusal by the Data Protection Agency to allow a person’s religious affiliation to be mentioned on the national identity card.
Arguing that “press freedom includes a possible recourse to a degree of exaggeration or even provocation,” the European Court of Human Rights on June 5 ordered Greece to pay Karis and the newspaper’s owners, I Avgi Publishing and Press Agency SA, 60,000 euros in damages.
