A nurse at the private Athens clinic where singer Giorgos Mazonakis died has told investigators he was sedated during his treatment, and that the doctor in charge initially urged staff to give police a coordinated account of events.

The nurse, one of the staff at the clinic on Karneadou Street in the upmarket Kolonaki district, spent three hours giving evidence to the 32nd regular investigating magistrate handling the case.

Mazonakis died on Wednesday 9 September, aged 54, during a plasmapheresis session at the Kolonaki clinic, and the two doctors accused over his death have been remanded in custody. Plasmapheresis is a procedure in which blood plasma is separated and removed from the body.

The nurse reportedly told the magistrate that her original statement about the singer’s arrival at the clinic had been given on the doctor’s instructions. “The doctor (Ioanna Gaka) told us to stick to the same story, but we hadn’t understood what had happened. She called me before I gave my statement to the police, but up to that point none of us had realised what had happened,” she is reported to have said.

According to her testimony, two plasmapheresis procedures were being carried out at the same time in separate rooms. “I was in the room next door, monitoring a plasmapheresis that the accused doctor was performing at the same time on another patient. The doctor was in the room with Mazonakis,” she reportedly said.

“I know he was sedated. I was asked for the drug to reverse the sedation… I was the one who then phoned an anaesthetist,” she is said to have told the magistrate, explaining that she had been obliged to give a supplementary statement.

She also corroborated the account given by the 58-year-old male doctor, Ilias Theodoropoulos, who has said he was asleep on the clinic’s sofa while the incident unfolded.

Medical association says clinic “secretly” operated at weekends

Earlier, Katerina Frangaki, legal adviser to the Athens Medical Association (ISA), said the association’s investigation had uncovered evidence that plasmapheresis was also being carried out outside the clinic’s declared opening hours.

She said the plasmapheresis machine appeared to have run for around 42 minutes during the procedure on Mazonakis, and that its records were also being examined for other uses in the preceding days.

According to Frangaki, the machine’s data show it was used on days and at times when the clinic claimed to be closed. “On 28 August it was used at night, at 23:33, on a patient. The clinic said it was open from 9am to 9pm,” she said.

She added that on Saturday 29 August the machine was operated even though the clinic did not open at weekends, and that on Sunday 30 August it “was used on a patient, as shown by what the machine recorded”.

Frangaki said the weekend use of the equipment took place without the association being informed or giving its approval. “They did it in secret, they did not get approval from the ISA, they knew they were doing it illegally,” she said.

She said the clinic had been inspected in both 2025 and 2026, and that the association found further evidence after the singer’s death. “The morning after Mazonakis died, the ISA found a great deal of evidence,” she said, adding that “the two doctors tried to deceive the ISA”.