The incident occurred during street clashes in central Athens on Monday between riot police and protesters as thousands of people marched through Athens to commemorate the student uprising against country’s military dictatorship more than 40 years ago.
The footage, shows the riot police storming the kiosk, in the central Exarchia district, pushing and shoving the young man before landing a blow to his head with a club.
The man is heard pleading “I just work here’ and “what are you doing…are you stealing water?” while he is told to ‘shut up’.
The police later claimed that they beat the man up, causing damage to his kiosk, because… he had refused to sell them water bottles allegedly saying ‘I don’t give water to cops’.
They denied stealing the water bottles saying they paid the man €20.
But Greek police came under renewed fire after the president of the police officers’ union said that the man should have been arrested for not accepting payment for the water bottles…
“This is what the law says, but they didn’t arrest him because they didn’t want to fuel more tension and tried to leave. But they did leave money on the counter,” Stavros Balaskas told Antenna TV, and defended his ‘exhausted colleagues who took out money to pay the kiosk, but the worker didn’t want to take it”
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