A group of Athens Medical School students yesterday held Deputy Health Minister Giorgos Constantopoulos hostage in a ministry auditorium for about half an hour after he refused to discuss reforms that would result in them working the first six months of their careers without pay.

The students, who had visited the ministry to discuss medics’ collective labor contract, prevented Constantopoulos from leaving the auditorium when he suggested their concerns be discussed “once they had graduated.”

Meanwhile in Thessaloniki, a prosecutor ordered an urgent investigation into the beating of a prison governor on Thursday by suspected anarchists who stormed a lecture he had been giving at the law school of Aristotle University. The assailants, who used clubs to beat Constantinos Tsourelis, governor of the Diavata prison, may face criminal charges. Tsourelis was in serious condition in the hospital yesterday.

The university’s senate blamed the “cowardly and abhorrent act” on “a gang from outside the university.”