Man’s death in Volos attributed to acute pulmonary edema, not beating

The death of a 26-year-old man in his home in Volos, central Greece, in the early hours of Monday cannot be attributed to any violence he may have suffered at the hands of police more than a month ago, a coroner in the northern port city of Thessaloniki ruled on Wednesday.

Eleni Kalyva, who conducted the postmortem examination in the presence of a prosecutor, said that Vassilis Mangos died of respiratory failure from an acute pulmonary edema.

Her ruling comes in the wake of media reports suggesting that Mangos’ death was the indirect result of a brutal beating he allegedly sustained when riot police tried to quell a protest rally in his native Volos in early June.

The incident was reportedly caught on video, prompting calls for an investigation by the Citizens’ Protection Ministry, which on Tuesday dismissed the allegations of police brutality as “despicable lies.”