This judicial practice, as it has been enforced by the Greek courts, is fully opposed to international judicial experience, which sets rules and terms for the use of DNA as means of evidence. 

 Lawyer Annie Paparousou highlights: “The use of biological materials as means of evidence in Greece has been regulated and enforced in a totally detrimental way to the interest of the defendant and essentially violates their defending rights. Under a prosecution circular, the violent obtaining of biological material from the defendant has been regulated and enforced, which constitutes torture and heavy insult to personality.

It is provided that further examination of the specimen is done exclusively in the police laboratories in a non-transparent manner, without the presence of a technical consultant representing the defendant and without any inspection of the process in question.

The recent years, the relevant reports of biological material analysis have been the only evidence on the grounds of which charges can be pressed for serious offences in trials based on the article 1874 PC (terrorism); they have also led to devastating convictions in an anti-procedural and non-scientific manner, as a report with a mixture of biological materials suffices in order to prove the defendant guilty.”