The shock of the young lady was followed by anxiety, exhaustion and a great battle with time began: “Her image with the black hood which covered her facial features and the television media of Greece and China broadcast it from morning until evening, he was likened to the image of a jihadist terrorist.
The image of her being escorted through the airport by the police, cameras and reporters covering the report, the officer being photographed holding up with her left hand the well-hidden 2.6 kg of cocaine that had just been revealed, and with her right the travel backpack of Irini, as if the arrested woman was the trophy of a successful – and with a huge amount by the standards of Southeast Asia – arrest, they froze Greece” underlines Sakis Kehagioglou in his book.
Irini Melissaropoulou with Sakis Kehagioglou.
In the book, Irene’s heartbreaking letters to her parents are published, the hostile treatment she received from her fellow inmates in miserable and third-world conditions is described, while the descriptions from the progress of the trial until the word “innocent” is heard are breathtaking.
Irene’s letter on May 29, 2018: “The time I am writing to you is half past eight in the afternoon. I am in my cell, on the 13th, in bed 10. Today has been a hopeless and tiring day. In the morning we had gymnastics from 10 to 11 in the morning. Our souls came out of our mouths. We did ten laps around the field in the heat, without shade, in the sun at 37°C running like the hunted to complete ten laps. I was out of breath by the fifth round and nearly passed out in the tenth. The gymnast was sitting in the shade holding a cold coffee and laughing. Our souls were coming out of our mouths and she was laughing and shouting, “Run faster to finish, faster.”
While we were crawling today as you can tell, then at work no help but the other girls didn’t want to say my name either. The Brigadier gave me strength and my God helped me to count five boxes of uniforms that had shirts, record them and wash them by hand, then iron the customs, hang them, iron all the shirts, hang up again and put the medals of each lady on the shoulders with their papers. And yet I’m still alive.”
The redemptive moment of the acquittal: “Irini could not, nor was she allowed, to come out of the glass canopy in which she was throughout the trial. With the completion of the procedure and the last details he was taken to the basement of the courthouse. Accustomed to the practice of Greek courts, where the prisoner is usually returned to prison, I did not expect that Irini would be free within an hour. I went down to the detention center with her parents, who were waiting outside and I went inside to see her and escort her to freedom. The moments were very intense and emotional. The news of her acquittal had spread like wildfire in the Hong Kong Media and television cameras, photographers and journalists had already gathered outside the detention centers. At 3:55 p.m. the nightmare that started sixteen months ago was over. She would see her island again, her house, her brother, but also the Admiral, whom she loved so much. She was taking her life back into her own hands.”
THE PRESENTATION OF THE BOOK
The presentation of the book took place in a central hotel. On the panel the writer Sakis Kehagioglou, the publisher of “Ferenikis” Christos Zampounis, the government representative Pavlos Marinakis, the deputy prosecutor of the Supreme Court Georgios Zorbas, the journalist Ioanna Mandrou, while among those present was Dora Bakoyannis, many MPs from .D. representatives of the judiciary and the church.
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