Fake doctor trial: Today the apology of “Dr Kontos”

For eight months, the judges of the Mixed Jury Court listened to dozens of witnesses in one of the most shocking cases that have ever reached the Greek Judiciary, which involves twelve murdersamong which and two minor childrenand fourteen attempted murders of critically ill patients.

The protagonist is a man without the slightest connection to medicine, who for a number of years, with the help of a group of people, pretending to be the leading scientist “Doctor Kontos” is accused of having led to either the death or serious injuries of his victims.

Today the court will call 49-year-old Nikos Kontosthis, who declared before the authorities an “experienced botanist”, to apologize for the actions of “Dr Kontos” described in the indictment. The appearing as a distinguished oncologist or neuro-oncologist, who it promised healing to cancer patients and patients with serious illnesses today he is called to account for his actions. Actions that, according to the case file, were assisted by 16 other co-accused of “Dr Kontos” doctors, executives of a certain clinic, a nun and others, who allegedly reinforced in patients the belief that the “fake doctor” was of high scientific prestige.

By apologizing, the “top oncologist” will try today to give answers for the hope attributed to him that he sold, and in many cases at an expensive price, to people who were facing serious illnesses. Victims of “Doctor” are mainly cancer patients, while the list includes patients with multiple sclerosis who convinced them that their disease was completely cured, the case of a patient who, after surgery in a private clinic in the presence of “Dr. Kontos” for spinal cord injury due to falling with a parachute, became 92 percent % disabled. It seems that a co-accused of Kontostathis, a doctor, who was a former minister, was also present at the operation in question. Also included is the case of a 4-year-old boy with muscular atrophy, whose parents were persuaded to stop the medication the child had been taking until then. As a result, the boy rapidly deteriorated, his body completely weakened and he collapsed, remaining since then in a wheelchair with 85% disability and “unable to care for himself”.

The 49-year-old is called to account for categories involving serial and attempted manslaughter, aggravated aggravated assault in common, aggravated and professional drug trafficking, aggravated and attempted felony fraud, counterfeiting of a medical procedure, aggravated forgery, possession of a firearm, and violation of the antiquities.

The hearing, which began last November, revealed tragic details about the actions of Kontostathis, who in the vast majority of the cases under consideration appear to have taken advantage of three conditions: terror and despair in the face of very serious illnesses, religious faith and trust in persons of the ecclesiastical community and the doubt about scientists.

The procedure before the MOD highlighted the possibility that the 49-year-old had to walk around wearing a medical apron in a well-known clinic, perhaps in others, where some of the staff called him a doctor. At the same time, he highlighted the role of a specific Monastery where pilgrims “queued” to see the scientist “who completely cured a nun of cancer”. His co-accused, the 49-year-old nun, had granted him space in the disputed Monastery which the accused had equipped to look like a medical clinic.

The victims in most cases were convinced that “Doctor Kontos” is an accomplished scientist who has effectively “neutralized cancer” with the method he follows, but “the scientific community is fighting him for reasons of financial interests” and thus “applies his treatments in Switzerland only for particularly well-off patients’.

Abandoning the medical treatment of the patients and surrendering themselves to the herbs, the so-called medicines and the exhausting diets suggested by the “doctor” assumed in many of them, as they told the court, metaphysical dimensions as if they were being given “the grace of God ” through such a great scientist, who convinced them that they could quickly return to their pre-disease lives. For many of these people, the 49-year-old’s “medicine” seemed to be the way to deliver them from the disease.

“We felt lucky when we met him” said many patients who managed to escape from the defendant’s fatal “cure” as well as several relatives of people who died while they were “tired” by Kontostathis.

Apologizing before the investigator, in June 2020, the 49-year-old claimed that he did not deceive his victims and that essentially what he did was to offer better quality life extension to the dying. “I offered therapeutic services, or in case one did not accept these methods, I offered positive, if anything, placebo services. The question was the qualitative prolongation of life, of the rest, unfortunately, dying people” he said characteristically in a memorandum that he had delivered to the judicial official. He had also said that at first he declared himself to be a “botanist, albeit an empirical one” but “then I got carried away and began to enjoy the title of doctor, embellishing it with various additional qualities while being in a psychological state of inactivity, that is, without the mind that this has to stop.”

Last December, “Doctor Kontos” completed 18 months of pre-trial detention for the case being tried, however he remains in prison as a new pre-trial detention warrant was issued against him in the same month, with a validity of 12 months, for the charge of money laundering.

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