By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 3 hours ago, Updated 3 hours ago
Eva Kaili’s Belgian lawyer Andre Risopoulos (centre) together with Greek lawyer Michalis Dimitrakopoulos (right) at the Brussels courthouse, January 19, 2023. JOHN THYS / AFP
The Socialist MEP has been in prison since last December, and her lawyers denounced her prison conditions on Thursday.
Belgian prosecutors opposed this Thursday, January 19, the release of Greek MEP Eva Kaili, who had been jailed for six weeks in connection with the alleged corruption scandal in the European Parliament, involving Qatar in particular, her lawyers said .
Outside the closed-door Brussels council chamber, the socialist-elected lawyers called for alternative measures to pre-trial detention “like the electronic bracelet,” said one of them, André Risopoulos, at the end of the hearing.
SEE ALSO – Qatargate: the scandal rocking the European Parliament
“All risks exist”
However, the prosecutor’s position was “resolutely negative,” the lawyer added. “The federal prosecutor assumes that all risks exist; the risk of leakage, the risk of collusion with third parties and the risk of destroying evidence,” continued Me Risopoulos. The Council Chamber, which is responsible for overseeing instruction and pre-trial detention, should make its decision at the end of the day.
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Eva Kaili, 44, who was ousted from her position as Vice-President of the European Parliament in mid-December, is one of four people jailed in this scandal, dubbed “Qatargate”, but which also quotes Morocco. She is suspected of receiving large sums of money from foreign powers in order to influence statements and positions in the European Parliament in favor of those countries.
A difficult imprisonment
Eva Kaili denies any corruption, her lawyers reiterated on Thursday, who accuse the Belgian judiciary of making her “pay the ultimate price” by detaining him “in difficult conditions”. His Greek lawyer, Michalis Dimitrakopoulos, denounced “torture” during a hearing over a recent “sixteen-hour solitary confinement in a police cell.”
According to Me Risopoulos, the detained Greek legislator has only been able to see her 23-month-old child, whom she had with her companion Francesco Giorgi, “twice in six weeks”. This Italian parliamentary assistant is also jailed in this affair, as is Pier Antonio Panzeri, a former socialist MEP who is a key figure and who cooperated with the judiciary on Tuesday 17 January in exchange for a limited prison sentence.
SEE ALSO – Qatargate: Eva Kaili’s lawyers are demanding placement under an electronic bracelet
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“Mr. Panzeri is about to buy a future, it is very good,” Me Risopoulos quipped to the press. The lawyer believed that the former Italian elected official-turned-NGO leader in Brussels was mainly trying to To protect family, while allowing this status of “repentant” under Belgian law. Pier Antonio Panzeri’s wife and daughter, who live in Italy, are the target of a European arrest warrant in Judge Michel Claise’s investigations. But they are contesting their surrender in Italian courts to Belgium.