GREECE: One of Europe's most determined but elusive terrorist groups appeared to have been smashed last night. Police in Athens charged three alleged members of November 17 with murder, armed robbery and membership of an illegal organisation, and said the gang's leader was detained on an Aegean island.
Mr Vassilis Xiros (30) and his brother, Christodoulos (44) were charged with homicide, attempted homicide and membership of a criminal organisation, possession and use of explosives and armed robbery. Mr Dyonisos Georgiadis (26) was charged with membership of a criminal organisation, possession and use of explosives and armed robbery.
The alleged leader of the organisation, French-born Mr Alexandros Giotopoulos, a 60-year-old professor at a university in Strasbourg, was captured on Wednesday night on the remote island of Lipsi where he has a holiday home. Last night he was being detained by the police.
Police said Mr Giotopoulos's fingerprints matched those found in one of the group's safe houses. They said he also matched the profile drawn up over the years of the group's leader.
The breakthrough for the police began last month when they managed - but only by accident - to achieve their first arrest in a 30-year campaign against the group. The man detained was Mr Savvas Xiros, a painter of religious icons arrested after explosives he was carrying went off prematurely.
According to police, he planned to attack a shipping company which had been renting a building where the group was keeping a huge arms cache. The arrest of Mr Xiros led police to his brother and yesterday's breakthrough charges.
The failure of the authorities to crack the organisation had led many people in Greece to suspect that it had friends in high places and spawned intricate conspiracy theories.
It also drew criticism from the United States, which long suspected the Greek authorities were less than enthusiastic about capturing any of the gang.
The group was named November 17 after the date of a 1973 student uprising in Athens against the military dictatorship. It waged a sporadic, incoherent but occasionally deadly campaign of terror against a variety of targets. Twenty-three people were murdered, and the group was also responsible for about 50 bomb and rocket attacks.
Their campaign began in 1975 with the murder in Athens of the CIA station chief, Richard Welch. A year after Welch was killed, a letter claiming responsibility for the assassination was published in the French daily Libération, which in the 1970s reportedly had links to left-wing extremists.
More recently, in June 2000, November 17 murdered a British military attaché, Stephen Saunders, who was shot dead by two men on a motorbike. The Greek police chief, Mr Fotis Nassiakos, said yesterday that Mr Vassilis Xiros had admitted taking part in Mr Saunders's murder.
Christodoulos is alleged to have admitted to being involved in nine murders, including the 1988 murder of a US military attaché, William Nordeen, and the killing of another US soldier, Ronald Steward.
Mr Dyonisos Georgiadis is said to have admitted taking part in bomb attacks and thefts, police said.
In between the Welch and Saunders murders the organisation, which police believe numbered no more than about 15, was responsible for a series of outrages but never appeared to have a thought-through objective or ideology. Other victims have been two Turkish diplomats and several Greek nationals over the past 27 years.
Mr Nassiakos said that Mr Giotopoulos fitted the picture of the person they believed might be the driving force behind the organisation. He had been living under the assumed name of Michalis Economou.
He is believed to have been active in the Paris-based student opposition to the military dictatorship which ruled Greece between 1967 and 1974 and to have lived in France and in Greece with a French woman. He is the son of Dimitris Giotopoulos, a well-known 1930s Communist theoretician and follower of Leon Trotsky.
The Greek Prime Minister, Mr Costas Simitis, praised the police but said more work was needed. "We are proceeding with the total breakup of terrorism in this country," he said.
