Christos Sartzetakis

Christos Sartzetakis (1989)

Christos Sartzetakis ( Greek Χρήστος Σαρτζετάκης , born April 6, 1929 in Thessaloniki ; † February 3, 2022 in Athens ) was a Greek lawyer and President of Greece from 1985 to 1990.

Life

Christos Sartzetakis' father was from Kandanos in Crete , his mother from near Florina in western Macedonia . He studied law at the University of Thessaloniki and then worked as a lawyer from 1954. In 1955 he was admitted to the office of judge. He later joined the civil service as a judge. As a district judge he worked from 1957 to 1959 in Thessaloniki, from 1959 to 1962 in Agrinion and from 1962 again in Thessaloniki.

As investigating magistrate, Sartezakis was responsible for investigating the alleged “fatal accident” of MP Grigoris Lambrakis on May 22, 1963 in Thessaloniki. He uncovered this accident as a murder plot and demonstrated the involvement of the police, military, judiciary, government officials and right-wing extremist circles. This case underlies Costa-Gavra's well- known film Z , based on the book of the same name by Vassilis Vassilikos .

Sartzetakis went to Paris for postgraduate studies in commercial and European law at the Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Économiques de Paris and Center Universitaire des Études des Communautés Européennes. In 1967 he was recalled to Greece after the coup by the colonels and relieved of his position as a judge in May 1968.

After his removal from office, he was arrested twice under the colonel regime. The second time he was detained for a total of around a year, spending the first 50 days in prison at the EAT-ESA, a military police interrogation department notorious for its methods, where he was severely tortured for the first 50 days. He was then held in Athens-Korydallos prison without ever being brought to justice. On November 19, 1971, Sartzetakis was finally released after international pressure, especially from France.

After the re-establishment of democracy in Greece, Sartzetakis was reinstated as a judge at the Athens High Court in September 1974 and in 1981 was appointed President of the Nafplion High Court. In October 1982 he became a judge at the Areopagus , the Supreme Court of Greece.

On March 29, 1985, Sartzetakis was elected President of the Republic by the Greek Parliament on the proposal of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou ( PA.SO.K. ) with 180 out of 300 votes and was sworn in the following day. Sartzetakis was and remained non-party. On May 5, 1990, he was succeeded in the presidency by his predecessor, Konstantinos Karamanlis .

He was married to Efi Argyriou and had a daughter with her.

literature

• Christos Sartzetakis , in: International Biographical Archive 37/1991 of September 2, 1991, in the Munzinger Archive ( start of article freely available)

web links

Commons : Christos Sartzetakis  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Christos Sartzetakis website (Greek)
• Christos Sartzetakis portrait on the Greek Presidency website