ATHENS, Greece (AP) — An angry crowd gathered Wednesday outside a courthouse on the southern Greek island of Crete for the preliminary hearing of a couple accused of brutally abusing a 3-year-old child who is fighting for his life in a hospital.

Riot police were deployed at the entrance to the courthouse to prevent the crowd from pushing its way into the building and confronting the defendants as the hearing began. One man sustained minor face injuries during the melee.

The couple — a 26-year-old woman and her 44-year-old boyfriend — have been accused of severely beating the woman’s young son, who was rushed to a hospital in the island’s main city of Heraklion on Sunday. The little boy’s case has received intense media attention in Greece and has sparked outrage across the country.

The child had suffered a severe head injury, as well as multiple other injuries to his limbs and torso, Heraklion University General Hospital deputy director Stelios Kteniadakis told Greece’s Skai television.

The boy, who is intubated in critical condition in the intensive care unit, bore signs of recent and of older injuries, as well as burn marks, Kteniadakis said.

“Honestly, all of us doctors who have happened to see the young child, we’ve never seen anything like it before,” he added.

The boy’s mother and her partner, who have been in custody since their arrest Sunday, appeared before a prosecutor Wednesday. They face several charges, including attempted murder, causing grievous bodily harm and exposing a minor to danger. They haven't been publicly named, in accordance with Greek law.

“Even the police officers are shocked with this case in Crete — they themselves have never handled a case like this before,” Greek police spokeswoman Konstantina Dimoglidou said on Greece’s Action24 TV. “I don’t know if we’ve ever seen in this country a child with such suffering, so badly abused at such a young age.”

The defendants have reportedly blamed each other for the abuse, with each denying they had harmed the boy.

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