Courts in Greece have freed a 53-year-old cleaning lady who forged her application for a state job, claiming to have finished elementary school.

The release is, however, temporary, pending a final review and decision by Greece’s Supreme Court.

The woman’s incarceration created an upheaval in a country where politicians have been found guilty of forging, stealing, lying and other offenses, and no punishment has been handed to them.

Thousands of activists created online protests, as well as sit-ins outside the jail where the women was incarcerated.

Cleaning ladies throughout Greece went on strikes in solidarity with the woman.

“The hypocrisy of a poor, uneducated cleaning woman going to prison for 10 years while a former prime minister who forged the entire nation’s accounting books and fraudulently got us into the euro… well, that was too much to swallow,” said Niki Karantonis, a reader of The Pappas Post in Athens who was an activist online against the prison sentence.

The woman forged her application on a government application, claiming to have completed elementary school, which was a requirement for the position.

It emerged in a review that she had only completed 5 out of 6 years of elementary school.

On Wednesday the court in the town of Larissa “accepted the petition for a suspension”, the woman’s lawyer told journalists. “That means (she) will today leave jail.”

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