GREEK MILITANTS have claimed responsibility for an arson attack against the German head of an EU task force to Greece.
A car parked outside the home, just outside Berlin, of Horst Reichenbach, head of the European Commission inspection team in Greece, was set alight on Sunday evening in what the alleged perpetrators said was revenge for austerity measures imposed on Greece.
The car, a BMW belonging to Mr Reichenbach’s MEP wife Dagmar Roth-Behrendt, was left a charred wreck after the attack. Perpetrators also threw stones and paint at the couple’s house in Groß Glienicke.
At first police played down the significance of the attack, believing it to be the latest in a series of arson attacks on expensive cars in the Berlin region. Then a letter claiming responsibility for the attack – aimed at Mr Reichenbach, not his wife – was sent to the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper.
The letter was reportedly sent by a group calling itself the “Friends of Loukanikos” – a reference to a dog regularly spotted at Athens anti-austerity demonstrations. They claimed that measures agreed as a condition of external funding had “severely worsened” the lives of ordinary Greeks.
Since September 2011 Mr Reichenbach has headed regular EU missions to Athens to assess progress in implementing measures agreed by the Greek government with the EU, IMF and ECB troika. The perpetrators threatened to strike again on other members of the regular inspection teams that travel to Greece. In the Greek press, Mr Reichenbach has already been portrayed as a Gauleiter, or Nazi-era district chief.
A European Commission spokesman condemned the attack.
