Christos Sartzetakis

Christos Sartzetakis (Χρήστος Σαρτζετάκης; 6 April 1929 – 3 February 2022) was a Greek jurist and a supreme justice of the Court of Cassation, who served as the president of Greece from 1985 to 1990.

Sartzetakis was born in Neapoli, Thessaloniki, on 6 April 1929.

His father, who served as a Gendarmerie officer in Thessaloniki, was a Cretan born in Kandanos, Chania, and his mother was a Greek Macedonian born in Sklithro, Florina.

He obtained a degree in law from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Sartzetakis entered the judicial career in 1955, became Justice of the Peace at Kleisoura, Kastoria, and in 1963, served as judge of the Court of First Instance of Thessaloniki.

On 27 May 1963, the left-wing Member of Parliament Grigoris Lambrakis died four days after being beaten.

Sartzetakis was called by the attorney of the Greek Supreme Court Constantine Kollias to proceed with the investigation, as the case was transferred to the Court of First Instance of Thessaloniki.

In March 1964, he sent a letter to the Minister of Justice Polychronis Polychronidis in which he implicated the police and the State as responsible for the murder.

Together with the prosecutor Stylianos Boutis, he ordered the preventive detention of four officers.

The trial began on 3 October 1966 and lasted 67 days at the Criminal Court of Thessaloniki.

Sarzetakis and the prosecutor Pavlos Dellaportas were under intense pressure to quickly close the case without continuing the investigation.

Two months later, the verdict was announced in which 21 defendants and all agents were acquitted, thus rejecting the prosecutor's proposal.

Only two persons were convicted as perpetrators, and both were pardoned by the Junta shortly thereafter.

Kollias, who soon became Prime Minister under the military junta, claimed that "Sartzetakis will answer to me."

In his memoirs, published after leaving the presidency, he stressed that Lambrakis' death was a clear political assassination with direct state involvement.

The Lambrakis investigation was the theme of the 1966 novel Z by Vassilis Vassilikos, and Sartzetakis was portrayed by Jean-Louis Trintignant in the novel's 1969 film adaptation by Costas Gavras.

After the Lambrakis prosecution, with permission to study commercial law and European Community law, Sartzetakis moved to Paris.

Sartzetakis was expelled from the judiciary along with 29 magistrates with the Greek Junta's Constitutional Act of 28 May 1968, allegedly because "in the exercise of his functions, he acted in a discriminatory manner, motivated by his political convictions in favor of a political party, in a way that violated the confidence of the citizens in his impartiality".

He was twice arrested by the Junta, first on Christmas Eve of 1970, and was tortured by Greek Military Police.

After an international outcry, he was released from the Junta's prison in 1971.

In September 1974, after the toppling of the dictatorship and the restoration of democracy in Greece, Sartzetakis was completely rehabilitated.

As a member of the Court of Appeals, in 1976 he rejected Germany's request to extradite the terrorist Rolf Pohle, arguing that his crimes were political and the Greek constitution prevented extradition in such cases.

The prosecutor of the Supreme Court initiated disciplinary proceedings against him and the other two judges who issued that decision.

He was named president of the Court of Appeals in 1981 and became a member of the Supreme Civil and Criminal Court of Greece in 1982.

The atmosphere just prior to the 1985 presidential elections was particularly unstable politically and the media of the time and the political parties considered the re-election of Konstantinos Karamanlis as President of the Republic as certain.

It was then that the Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou nominated Sartzetakis, a judge who had not been involved in politics, as a candidate to succeed Karamanlis.

On 10 March 1985, immediately following the public announcement of this decision, Karamanlis resigned in the face of PASOK's unexpected rejection of his re-election and because of his opposition to Papandreou's recently announced plans to reform the 1975 Constitution and transfer the few executive powers from the President of the Republic to the Prime Minister.

Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament Ioannis Alevras took over as acting President of Greece.

The first vote in the Greek parliament took place on 17 March, in which Sartzetakis obtained 178 votes as a sole candidate.

The second vote was held on 23 March and he obtained support from 181 of the deputies.

That vote was controversial as the ballot papers were of different colors, with Sartzetakis' being blue and the others white, causing a violation of the secrecy of the vote.

It was not until the third and stormy vote, held on 29 March, for Sartzetakis to be elected the new president to a 5-year term, thanks to the votes of the 180 deputies from PASOK and the Communist Party.

Shortly thereafter, he issued a televised message in which he called for unity, reaffirming that "our country is too small to support the luxury of national divisions".

He was sworn in on 30 March in a ceremony boycotted by the 112 deputies of the conservative opposition (ND), who refused to attend based on the allegation that the election had been rendered unconstitutional when the acting Greek president Alevras, the then president of the Parliament, was allowed to vote.

In 1986, Sartzetakis strongly opposed the bill that legalized abortion in the country.

Between 1989 and 1990, he had to face an unprecedented triple electoral repetition due to the inability of the parties to form a government.

In 1990, Christos Roussos, a young homosexual sentenced to life imprisonment in 1976 for murder, went on hunger strike.

Faced with this situation, and heeding his appeal for a mistrial because he had murdered the man who wanted to prostitute him, the Papandreou government pardoned him, but was met with Sartzetakis' refusal to grant it.

This fact provoked a wave of indignation accusing Sartzetakis of being a homophobe and soured his relationship with Prime Minister Papandreou.

The pardon ultimately was granted in 1990 by Karamanlis.