Testimonies of families heard in ‘quack doctor’ trial

The trial of ‘Dr Kontos’ and his 16 co-defendants continued Tuesday in the court’s largest chambers with testimonies by the families of the victims. The doctor is accused of 12 counts of murder and 14 attempted murders of cancer patients to whom he prescribed unauthorized herbal remedies.

A lawyer took the witness stand to share how she trusted the wellbeing of her father, who suffered from intestinal cancer, in the hands of the defendant. She heard about the doctor’s treatments in 2016, after four years of chemotherapy for her father. She testified that she had heard of the doctor at the Monastery of the Archangels in Pilio, central Greece.

“He was against chemotherapy. We stopped my father’s medical treatment and began following Kontos’ therapies. He got slightly better in the beginning and that was misleading,” she said, before adding that “he told us that tinctures we were being given were only available to a select few. He would give us the bottles in person. He said they were special distillations that only a few could access. He would bring them to Greece from Switzerland, he said.”

In an earlier session, the main defendant had submitted for a mistrial arguing that his rights had been ignored, as according to his defense, his request to be moved to a prison facility closer to Athens to facilitate communication with his lawyers was rejected. The motion was rejected by the court.