The woman who slapped Greece's former first lady Dimitra Liani told an investigating judge Friday her attack was a political action and urged more citizens to imitate her.
"I was expressing the feelings of the people, who must mobilize to take similar action," Anastasia Athini-Tsiouni told a magistrate who called her in to answer charges of "unprovoked abusive action."Athini-Tsiouni, a finance ministry civil servant, walked into a book-signing in central Athens last month and struck Liani, known throughout Greece as Mimi, twice across the face.
She denied the magistrate's charge, saying Liani, a former Olympic Airways flight attendant who married the late socialist prime minister Andreas Papandreou and became his chief of staff, had provoked her with her behavior.
There was no immediate decision to send her to trial over the charge.
Athini-Tsiouni's attack interrupted a promotional signing of Liani's best-selling memoir of life with Papandreou, which she described as a "confession of the soul."
Papandreou's public extramarital affair with Liani, her growing political power and a posh pink villa built with interest-free loans from friends and government ministers have made the 42-year-old widow controversial in Greece.