Guards convicted of torturing prison inmate who later died

A Thessaloniki court on Thursday handed jail terms of between five and seven years to 12 correctional officers for causing grievous bodily harm in March 2014 to Albanian inmate Ilie Kareli at Nigrita Prison in northern Greece where he later died.

The court, which deemed that the officers tortured Kareli but did not cause his death, ordered their release pending the hearing of the appeals that they lodged immediately after the verdicts were issued.

The court gave a 13th correctional officer a suspended sentence and exonerated the former warden of the prison, who had faced charges of harboring a criminal, after deeming that there was inadequate evidence for his conviction.

Kareli, 42, died in solitary confinement a few hours after being transferred to Nigrita Prison from Malandrino jail in central Greece, where he had stabbed a prison officer to death.