Its Special Investigative Section engaged in widespead abuse against officers and soldiers and thus, following the fall of the junta and the restoration of democracy in 1974, it was gradually cleansed of torturers and reorganized into its current form.

In April 1967, shortly after seizing power in a coup, junta leader George Papadopoulos appointed Dimitrios Ioannides chief of the ESA, which gradually had been transformed into an internal security army.

Many of the allegations of prisoner torture under the Papadopoulos regime involved the ESA, in particular its Special Investigative Section (Greek: Εἰδικὸν Ἀνακριτικὸν Τμῆμα, tr.

The ESA was disbanded in 1974 by Constantine Karamanlis[citation needed] and its leading members involved in torture were court-martialled and sentenced during the Greek junta trials, although many served only token prison terms.

Carried out by Janice T. Gibson and Mika Haritos-Fatouros, the research also showed that recruits underwent series of rigorous treatments and training over a matter of months in order to prepare them psychologically for the task of torturing detainees.

[12] The headquarters of the Special Interrogation Sections of the Military Police (EAT-ESA) was in a building which now houses the Eleftherios Venizelos Museum at Eleftherias Park, Vassilissis Sofias Avenue in Athens.