About 400 conscientious objectors to military service were held: all were prisoners of conscience. More than 15 people were prosecuted for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression. Conscientious objectors in military camps continued to face harsh prison conditions. There were further reports of torture and ill-treatment. The death penalty was completely abolished. Two Albanian citizens were feared to have "disappeared". Following elections in October, Andreas Papandreou, leader of the Panellinio Sosialistiko Kinima (PASOK), Panhellenic Socialist Party, succeeded Constantine Mitsotakis as Prime Minister. In December parliament officially abolished the death penalty in peace and wartime. There is no alternative civilian service for conscientious objectors to military service. Some 400 conscientious objectors, the vast majority of them Jehovah's Witnesses, were imprisoned for refusing to undertake military service. Most were serving four-year sentences which they could reduce to about three years by working in prison. A Jehovah's Witness minister, Charalambos (Babis) Andreopoulos, was threatened with imprisonment for refusing to perform military service on conscientious grounds. Although Greek law provides for automatic exemption from military service for all religious ministers, the military authorities refused to exempt Charalambos Andreopoulos because they considered that the Jehovah's Witness Watchtower Society "is not a religion, but rather a business of economic and political nature". In March the Ministry of National Defence, on the basis of an emergency provisional ruling from the Council of State, granted Charalambos Andreopoulos a postponement from military service pending a final ruling which had not been given by the end of the year. At least 15 people were tried for criticizing government policies on ethnic minorities and foreign affairs. In April Christos Sideropoulos and Anastasios Boulis were both sentenced to five months' imprisonment for comments they had made to a magazine calling for the recognition of a Macedonian minority in Greece (see Amnesty International Report 1993). Their sentences were suspended pending an appeal which had not been heard by the end of the year. The appeal of four members of the Antipolemiki Antiethnikisti Syspirosi, Anti-War Anti-Nationalist movement, including Stratis Bournazos, who had been sentenced to 19 months' imprisonment in May 1992 (see Amnesty International Report 1993), had not been heard by the end of the year. The defendants were not remanded in custody. Two further appeals against convictions for public declarations of opposition to government policy on Macedonia were still pending. Michail Papadakis, a 17-year-old high-school pupil, had been arrested in December 1992 after handing out leaflets about the Macedonian question during a demonstration. He was convicted of incitement and carrying a weapon - no corroborative evidence was produced for the second charge - and sentenced to one year's imprisonment. The other appeal concerned five members of the Organosi gia tin Anasingrotisi tou Kommunistikou Kommatos Elladas (OAKKE), Organization for the Reconstruction of the Communist Party, who had been arrested in 1992 while putting up posters in Athens, the capital. They were convicted of incitement and illegally posting bills although the law on posting bills has rarely, if ever, been enforced. They were sentenced to six and a half months' imprisonment in January 1992, but were released pending an appeal which was not heard during the year. Reports continued to be received that conscientious objectors were being held in military camps in conditions which amounted to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In February, two conscientious objectors, Pavlos Kyriakou and Petros Manthou, were transferred to hospital in Kozani suffering from pneumonia. They had apparently been held in disciplinary cells in sub-zero temperatures without heating or blankets. There were further reports of torture and ill-treatment, including several which involved riot police. In February Nikitas Papanastassatos, a photographer for the newspaper Eleftherotypia, was reportedly seized by riot police officers after he had taken photographs of them beating a reporter from another newspaper. He alleged that he was held handcuffed in a police van where he was beaten by 15 police officers and that his face was slapped while riot police officers attempted to force him to hand over his film. Amnesty International also received a large number of allegations of ill-treatment during the expulsion of tens of thousands of Albanian nationals in mid-1993. In most cases the allegations were that soldiers, police and border guards beat, kicked or punched those being expelled. Gëzim Cani, from çerme, Lushnjë in Albania, was arrested by Greek border guards after crossing the border into Greece illegally in May. Gëzim Cani was allegedly beaten with truncheons by the soldiers who arrested him and forced to run alongside a moving military vehicle while soldiers held him by the hair. Two cousins, Tom and Roberto Natsis, apparently "disappeared" in March. Both ethnic Greeks with Albanian citizenship, they were last seen being arrested by an armed police officer in Zagora. Despite initial confirmation by the police in Zagora that they were holding the cousins, police later gave conflicting information as to where the cousins had been taken and denied any knowledge of their whereabouts. By the end of the year, no further information had been received concerning the whereabouts of the two men. In January Amnesty International published a report, Greece: Violations of the right to freedom of expression - further cases of concern. It called for the quashing of the convictions of prisoners of conscience and for the conviction of Michail Papadakis to be reviewed. In February Amnesty International called on the government to ensure impartial investigations into allegations of ill-treatment of conscientious objectors by soldiers and military police and also into the conditions in which conscientious objectors were being held in military camps. The government gave no information about investigations into dozens of cases of torture and ill-treatment raised in 1992 (see Amnesty International Report 1993), other than about Süleyman Akyar, who died in January 1991 apparently as a result of being tortured by police officers. In a letter in September the Greek authorities stated that "the investigation remained inconclusive". In March Amnesty International published a report, 5,000 years in prison: conscientious objectors in Greece, which drew attention to the failure of successive governments to bring Greek legislation on conscientious objection into line with international standards. In June Amnesty International urged the authorities to take urgent steps to trace Tom and Roberto Natsis. In their reply the authorities denied that the cousins had ever been arrested by police, but gave no details of any investigation into their alleged "disappearance". In December Amnesty International again wrote to the authorities expressing concern about torture and ill-treatment in police stations and prisons. Amnesty International continued to urge the government to release all prisoners of conscience and to introduce legislation on conscientious objection which fully reflects international standards.

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