Steve Quayle News Alerts

July 31, 2002
From John Carr in Athens

GREEK terrorists had been planning a bombing campaign targeting tourists over the summer to embarrass the Government in the run-up to the 2004 Olympic Games, police said yesterday.

The 17 November group was ready to bomb passenger ferries, ticket terminals and other popular tourist sites in the hope of paralysing plans for the Games. The United States had threatened to boycott the Games if there were further bloodshed.

A sustained campaign of terrorism would also have blighted next year’s Greek presidency of the European Union.

Details of the summer bombings allegedly were told to detectives by Savvas Xiros, a member of 17 November who is recovering in hospital after the bomb he was carrying exploded prematurely in the port of Piraeus last month.

Mr Xiros, 40, an icon painter, listed tourist targets in Athens and Piraeus, which police say could have caused many casualties. Another potential target was the city police headquarters where Alexander Giotopoulos, the presumed leader of 17 November, is being held. Police sources said the university professor, 58, is the only one of the 14 suspects detained who has refused to reveal any links with the group that has killed 23 people over 27 years.

Greek officials have said that the terrorist threat has not disappeared because those in custody are said to have named further group members still at large. They include a Greek socialite who took part in the first murder — in which Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens, was the victim — and later vanished. Even if caught, she and other suspects could evade punishment because of Greece’s 20-year statute of limitations.

Investigators know they have to act swiftly if they are to bring some of those in custody to trial while they are still within the time limit.

Alexandros Likourezos, a lawyer and member of the Opposition, said: “The 20-year statute of limitations for Welch and the next three killings has expired, so the court cannot try anyone for these crimes, even if they confess to them.” Mr Likourezos said that the statute could also affect prosecutions in other cases if the authorities did not act quickly. “Apart from murder, all other crimes, such as attempted murder, robberies and bomb attacks have a 15-year statute,” he said. The statute does not affect Nikos Papanastasiou, 50, a potter, who is the latest suspect to be detained. Police claim that he is one of the original members of 17 November. He is charged with the attempted murder of Robert Judd, a US military officer, in April 1984, with killing Nicolas Momferratos, the Greek press baron, and his driver in 1985, and a Greek policeman in 1984.

Eight of the suspects have been moved across the capital in a high-security convoy to a prison unit that has been built to house the group. Thirty high-security cells have been set up also at the Korydallos prison, which suggests that police are expecting to make more arrests.

Anti-terrorist police also have begun searching the contents of some 50 computer disks that were found in one of the group’s hideouts. These were said to contain detailed plans for security van robberies, but so far no murders.

Two of the other suspects charged with murder are Mr Xiros’s brothers. One has confessed, with Savvas, to being part of the terrorist squad that shot dead Brigadier Stephen Saunders, the British defence attaché, as he drove to work in June 2000.

The 17 November group, which took its name from a 1973 student protest in Athens against the ruling Greek military junta, has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks and has also admitted that it tried to target the British troops that passed through Greek ports on their way to the war in Kosovo.

After the initial public relief at the capture of the first suspects belonging to 17 November, ministers are concerned that many Greeks have a “Robin Hood” image of the group. A survey published in Imerisia, a financial newspaper, found that 19 per cent of Greeks sympathised with its activities and considered members to be “social revolutionaries”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-369987,00.html