Two doctors accused in the death of singer Giorgos Mazonakis are expected to be transferred to Korydallos prison on Thursday after a judge ordered them held pending trial.
Ioanna Gaka and Ilias Theodoropoulos, a husband-and-wife pair who ran a private practice in Kolonaki, face an upgraded charge of intentional homicide with possible malice by omission. Investigators say they ignored alarms during a plasmapheresis session, delayed calling an ambulance and later deleted photos and video from a phone.
The pair now face the felony of intentional homicide with possible malice committed by omission. That is a substantial upgrade from the original charge of fatal exposure. If convicted, the offence can carry a life sentence.
The remand decision followed an approximately 18-hour apologetic process. Their lawyers have said they will challenge the arrest and detention warrants, arguing that their clients’ procedural rights were “brutally abused.”
What the court treated as the fatal mistakes
Investigators say the doctors’ conduct after Mazonakis’s condition deteriorated is central to the case.
According to the detention rationale:
- Alarms on the plasmapheresis machine warned of a serious relapse, but the procedure was reportedly not stopped.
- The delay in calling emergency services was treated as especially serious. Authorities say the doctors failed to notify EKAB in time and offered no adequate explanation for the lost minutes.
- The defendants were judged unable to provide the first aid needed to reverse the singer’s collapse.
Machine records and witness accounts place the treatment in the early afternoon of 9 September at the practice on Karneadou Street in Kolonaki. Digital logs indicate the device ran for about 42 minutes. Investigators are reconstructing a much longer gap between signs of distress and the ambulance call, which several reports place around 4:21 p.m. EKAB has said crews arrived within minutes and found the patient in asystole.
The same decision notes that both doctors carried out a high-risk procedure in premises that lacked the proper licence and equipment, and without the required prior examinations. Investigators also say evidence was concealed, including deleted digital files — a factor cited in the decision to remand them.
The Athens Medical Association has said the clinic was licensed only for general practice and was not authorised to perform plasmapheresis. A committee later recommended permanent closure of Gaka’s unlicensed clinic and a large fine.
The photo sent to the hypnotherapist
A separate line of inquiry concerns why Gaka sent a photograph of Mazonakis during plasmapheresis to Nasos Komianos, who describes himself as a hypnotherapist and “retroactive therapist.”
The image, timestamped 14:43:36 on 9 September, shows Mazonakis lying down with the machine running, his eyes tightly closed and intravenous catheters in his arms. A second photo at 14:45:22 and a video at 14:43:55 were recovered from the same phone. All three files were deleted shortly after 19:00 that day, before Gaka went to police.
Authorities want to know why the photo was forwarded, what was said in any messages at the time, and whether the exchange concerned Mazonakis’s condition or treatment. During her defence, Gaka did not initially name the recipient. She said photographing patients was her usual practice and that the material was not sent to her husband. Later reporting has identified Komianos as the person under examination as the recipient. Investigators are also looking at whether he introduced Mazonakis to the doctor.
The defence firm Nikos Agapinos and Associates said it would immediately challenge the temporary detention order before the competent council.
The two doctors deny criminal intent. Gaka has blamed delays involving EKAB and said she acted in panic. Theodoropoulos has said he was drawn into the case because of his wife, maintained he was not performing the procedure, and has described himself as having been elsewhere at key moments — claims investigators are testing against CCTV, machine logs, and phone data.
