Greek couple charged with manslaughter over suffocation death of boy

The child was reportedly abused and asphyxiated after his mouth was sealed with insulation tape

File: A police officer blocks the road in Athens, Greece (Reuters)

A woman and her partner in Greece have been arrested and charged with manslaughter over the killing of her seven-year-old son by suffocation five years ago.

According to the police, the boy - identified only as Andreas - was abused and asphyxiated after his mouth was sealed with insulation tape, in one of the worse cases of child abuse to come to light in Greece.

The child was killed in 2017 but the case only came to light on Saturday when investigators found a toolbox containing two bags of human bones in an apartment shared by the boy’s 29-year-old mother and her 33-year-old partner.

The authorities were acting on a tip off they had received in November last year.

The couple were detained over the weekend and appeared on Tuesday before an investigating magistrate, state-run ERT TV reported. The couple was formally charged with manslaughter and remanded in custody pending trial.

The police, in a statement, said the woman’s partner smothered the boy in her presence and she did nothing to stop him. The boy’s body was then cemented into the wall of the roof patio of an apartment building where the couple lived at the time of the incident.

When they moved to a new apartment, the man took the remains in a workers’ toolbox and hid them inside a wooden sofa on their balcony, police said.

Alexis Filios, the man’s attorney, told reporters that the defendant had “a certain way of punishing” the boy, but denied physical abuse. Mr Filios said the accused told the court that the mother did not take part in the acts against the boy.

Additional reporting by agencies