Monday 23 February 2009

Death threat to Greek media

The explosion at Citibank in Athens came without warning. Now a guerrilla splinter group is targeting police and journalists
Helena Smith in Athens
The Observer, Sunday 22 February 2009
Article history
Amid growing fears that Greece could become a centre of terrorism in Europe, political extremists yesterday issued a warning to journalists, saying it had them within its sights because they represented a corrupt establishment.
In a statement claiming responsibility for an assault on a private television station four days earlier, the Sect of Revolutionaries guerrilla group vowed to step up their campaign of terror.
"By attacking the channel, we are sending an ultimatum to all journalists," the militants said in the declaration, originally made on a CD and published in the daily newspaper Ta Nea
The warning, unprecedented in a country that thought it had eradicated guerrilla warfare, came as counter-terrorism experts intensified the search for another group of militants whose attempt to carry out carnage in the centre of Athens was only narrowly thwarted last week.
The manhunt, launched after a string of attacks in the Greek capital, followed a rare police appeal for information that might unmask the young men and women believed to be behind the new urban guerrilla movement.
Greece has been hit by a series of attacks since the beginning of the year.
Modelling themselves on the far-left groups that wrought havoc in Europe in the Seventies, extremists have used guns, hand grenades and explosive devices to target police, media outlets and perceived symbols of capitalism.
The assaults culminated on Wednesday with an attempt to detonate a car bomb outside the headquarters of Citibank in Athens. The 60 kilogram device, assembled with ammonium nitrate fuel oil - the explosive used in the Oklahoma City bombing - could have destroyed the four-storey building and killed hundreds.
Less than 24 hours earlier, two gunmen on a motorbike fired shots at the private television station and threw an explosive device at the premises that failed to detonate.
Bullet casings found at the scene matched those used in an attack on a police station two weeks earlier for which the Sect of Revolutionaries also claimed responsibility. The gang first appeared with a proclamation in another CD that was left on the grave of a teenaged boy whose death at the hands of a policeman plunged Greece into the worse civil unrest it had seen in decades in December.
"This new generation [of guerrillas] is very dangerous and very serious," said Michalis Chrysohoides, a former public order minister in charge of counter-terrorism in the run-up to the 2004 Athens Olympics. "In terms of violence, they make 17 November [the notorious terror organization that operated in Greece for nearly 30 years] look like little angels."
The resurgence of terrorism has sent tremors through the country's security forces. Widely thought to be linked to the last December's "uprising", its reappearance has also shocked the public at large. Policemen noticeably appear terrified on patrol and as they guard public buildings, all too aware that it could be them next.
Most of the attacks have been against policemen whose reputation as a hated symbol of authority was reinforced when 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos was shot dead, as he enjoyed a night out in Athens, by special police guard Epaminondas Korkoreas. The shooting prompted thousands to take to the streets, unleashing a wave of anger that saw the country erupt in riots for the next three weeks.
"From now on, the life of every cop is worth as much as a bullet, while their bodies are the ideal target practice," the Sect of Revolutionaries declared in its maiden proclamation. "They, like the doughnuts that they eat, are no good without a hole in the middle."
Ominously, the group also pledged to expand its targets to "prominent Greeks" including politicians, media stars, capitalists and state officials. "Today's statement shows that they mean business," said one police official speaking on condition of anonymity. "The time may soon come when journalists need bodyguards in this county."
A blight on Greece for decades, domestic terrorism was thought to have been eradicated with the dismantlement of the 17 November group. The organisation, whose targets included the British embassy's military attaché in Athens, Brigadier Stephen Saunders, was disbanded in 2002.
Unlike the Marxist 17 November, which emerged after the collapse of US-backed military rule, the new generation of urban guerrillas has tried neither to garner popular support nor explain its actions.
Instead, the Sect of Revolutionaries, believed by experts to be a branch of Revolutionary Struggle - a group that made its debut with a rocket attack on the US embassy in 2007, and also thought to be behind the attack on Citibank - has stood out for its cold cynicism and marked lack of ideology. "We don't do politics, we do guerrilla warfare," it declared.
Mounting social unrest is believed to have goaded the militants into armed action. Youths radicalised by record levels of unemployment and deep-seated economic disaffection are thought to have augmented the ranks of anti-establishment groups, many of which emerged emboldened from the December "uprising". Last week, authorities announced that crime rates had also soared.
But the frequency of the attacks and their sheer brazenness - the assailants have often struck in broad daylight - has surprised Greeks. In a break with the tradition of careful targeting by Greek extremists, authorities were not alerted to the planned attack against Citibank, raising the spectre of mass casualties.
"I am very afraid that the situation will get a lot worse," said Chrysohoides, the former public order minister. "This is like nothing we have dealt with before. These people care not for human life. What we are seeing doesn't happen elsewhere in Europe. It happens in Kabul."

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