Until late at night, the Greek authorities waited for approval or rejection of the request of a Greek prisoner in Turkish prisons to attend the funeral of a relative who died in a train accident in Tempe, and intervened in this direction. According to diplomatic sources, the Greek consulate in Adrianople was mobilized at the request of the relatives of a prisoner who had lost a close relative in an accident at Tempe. The consul visited the prisoner in prison and according to reports, the Turkish authorities provided all the requested conditions. Diplomatic sources said that at the direction of Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias, the Greek consul immediately contacted the competent Turkish prosecutor’s office and requested emergency permission to visit a Greek citizen, not respecting the weekly deadline.

Permission to visit was given as an exception, and soon the meeting took place. The same sources stressed that the consul also met with the head of the competent Prosecutor General’s Office in Raidesto to convey the request of the detained Greek citizen. Yesterday late in the evening, in the context of speeding up the processing of the request, the Greek Ambassador in Ankara met with Mr. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey. From the embassy, ​​at the direction of Mr. Dendias, an urgent oral message was sent to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, emphasizing the humanitarian nature of the request. The same diplomatic sources noted that accepting or not accepting a request for “special permission on humanitarian grounds” is within the exclusive competence of the Turkish authorities. It is worth noting that contacts at the diplomatic level (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) do not touch on the substance of the request, which will ultimately be considered by the administration of the neighboring prison, that is, the Ministry of Justice. People who are fully aware of the talks held yesterday in Turkey say that they were held at a good level, and the Turks have realized the delicate nature of the matter, despite the fact that specific permits are issued extremely sparingly.