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Fighting for revolution? The life

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Journal of Southern Europe and the BalkansVolume 6, Number 3, December 2004

Fighting for revolution? The life and death ofGreeces revolutionary organization 17 November,19752002GEORGE KASSIMERISHistory & Governance Research Institute, HLSSMillennium City BuildingUniversity of WolverhamptonWolverhamptonWV1 [email protected]

GEORGE KASSIMERIS

The long history of 17N terrorism ended on 5 September 2002, when thegroups leader of operations, Dimitris Koufodinas, turned himself in to thepolice after 2 months on the run. Koufodinas pulled up at police headquarterson Alexandras Avenue in a taxi at 2:35 p.m., dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt,sunglasses and a jockey. I am Dimitris Koufodinas and I have come to turnmyself in, he told the stunned duty officer before being taken to the 12th floorof the anti-terrorism squad. Koufodinas had been on the run since the 29 June2002 premature detonation of the bomb Savvas Xiros was carrying in Piraeus.Soon after, Xiros from his hospital bed and apparently fearing for his life, gavethe prosecutor in charge of the anti-terrorism investigation critical informationthat fuelled a chain reaction of arrests leading to the dismantling of the groupin less than a month.1 Koufodinas, through a statement read out by his lawyer,declared that he willingly gave himself up

[to] undertake the political responsibility of all 17N actions. I deny my guilt inthe actions attributed to me the way they are in the indictment. The value thatdetermined my personal course was my faith in the construction of revolution-ary movement and my vision for a socialist society. I express my solidarity withall those who are in detention, justly or unjustly with regard to this case. Forevery fighter, dignity is a basic value and a title of honour. 2

In December 2003, after a 9-month trial3 held in a purpose-built courtroom inAthens largest maximum-security prison, a three-member tribunal convicted15 members of the group while another four were acquitted due to lack ofsufficient evidence. The court upheld the state prosecutors recommendationfor 21 life terms and a 25-year sentence for accused leader and chief ideologueAlexandros Giotopoulos while the groups operational leader, Dimitris Koufo-

1For a detailed account of the sequence of events that led to the breakthrough against 17N seeOdyssey, SeptemberOctober 2002.

2On the Greek medias reaction to Koufodinas unexpected surrender see Kathimerini and Ta

Nea, 6 September 2002.3The longest in modern Greek history.

ISSN 1461-3190 print/ISSN 1469-963X online/04/03025915 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/1461319042000296813


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260 George Kassimeris

dinas, received 13 life sentences and 25 years in jail. Other life sentences plus25 years were handed down to hitmen Christodoulos Xiros (10 life terms), his

brother Savvas (six life terms), Vassilis Tzortzatos (four life terms) and IraklisKostaris (four life terms).4

The early years

17N emerged at a time when Western Europe was the most active terroristscene in the world. The mid-1970s was a period of Red and Black terror,state-sponsored political assassinations, kidnappings and indiscriminate public

bombings. In theory, 17Ns main aim was to change the pattern of Greeksociety and move it towards a revolutionary situation. Like the Red ArmyFaction in Germany, Action Directe in France and the Red Brigades in Italy,17N also used the argument that if violence constitutes the most efficient and

essential instrument without which the revolution cannot succeed, then it isdesired, rational and justified.5 However, the groups trajectory and organiza-tional evolution had been considerably different from Italys Red Brigades (BR),Frances Action Directe (AD) or Germanys Red Army Faction (RAF).

Unlike these groups, 17N did not begin as a loose network of minorgroupings that shared general extreme-left orientations. Both BR and ADoriginally emerged from various cells with names such as CPM (CollettivoPolitico Metropolitan) and Clodo (Comite liquidant ou detournant les ordina-teurs).6 Conversely, 17N never attempted to expand its sphere of influence onthe national territory, which partly explains the organizations operationalcontinuity and remarkable resistance to infiltration. Another striking difference

between 17N and other groups had been its targeting strategy.Most revolutionary communist groups on the European scene graduated

from low-level bombings to more lethal attacks. It was almost 4 years beforethe AD progressed from low-level bombings to the assassination of the Frenchgeneral Rene Audran in January 1985. The Belgian Communist Combatant Cells(CCC) carried out 26 bombings before it even considered a lethal attack andItalys BR went through 7 years and two major operational phases before theydecided to raise its sights from kneecappings and assassinations.7 17Nadopted a radically different approach: they started off by killing their targets.

4

Five other members (the younger of the Xiros brothers, Vassilis, Costas Karatsolis, PatroklosTselentis, Sotiris Kondylis and Costas Telios) received the maximum 25-year sentence. Telios, whohanded himself in and was diagnosed with severe psychiatric disability, was the only convictedmember to receive a suspended sentence and walk free pending an appellate trial, on the conditionthat he report to his local police precinct monthly and not leave the country. Only four convictsreceived less than the maximum 25 years: Thomas Serifis (17 years), Dionysis Georgiadis (9 years)and 8 years each to Nikos Papanastasiou and Pavlos Serifis. Papanastasiou and Tselentis togetherwith two of the acquittedKoufodinas wife, Angeliki Sotiropoulou and former trade unionistYiannis Serifiswill be tried again following appeals filed by the state prosecutor.

5Raphael Cohen-Almagor, Foundations of violence, terror and war in the writings of Marx,Engels and Lenin, Terrorism and Political Violence, 3(2), summer 1991, p. 2.

6See Michael Y. Dartnell, Action Directe: Ultra-left Terrorism in France, 19791987, Frank Cass,London, 1995, pp. 7377; and Vittorfranco S. Pisano, A survey of terrorism of the left in Italy:197078, Terrorism: An International Journal, 2(3/4), 1979, pp. 171213.

7See Yonah Alexander and Dennis A. Pluchinsky (eds), European Terrorism: Today & Tomorrow,Brasseys, McLean, VA, 1992.


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Fighting for revolution? 261

17N used its first three attacks to gain public sympathy and galvanizeleft-wing extremists into action. From 1975 to 1980, 17N attacks were deliber-ately designed to identify the group with the concerns of the Greek masses, andto capitalize on public perceptions of US complicity in the emergence of themilitary dictatorship and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The group targeted

symbolic enemies of the Greek populace, such as the USA and members of the19671974 police apparatus, to demonstrate its ethno-patriotic credentials andto highlight the fact that the first post-junta government of KonstantinosKaramanlis had allowed crimes committed against the Greek people to gounpunished. After killing CIAs station chief in Athens, Richard Welch, 17Ntried to link American hegemonism to long-standing domestic problemsar-guing that the continuing US presence humiliated Greek people and disfiguredall aspects of national life. Conveying its rage through the dramatized style ofthe communique 17N declared that

[enough] is enough. The American imperialists and their domestic agents mustunderstand that the Greek people are not a flock of sheep. They must alsounderstand that this time the people wont swallow their lies, provocations andpoisonous propaganda; they have realised that the Americans have tied the[Karamanlis first post-junta] governments hand behind its back so it has noindependence of action and thus can do absolutely nothing. The main slogan ofthe 1973 Polytechnic uprising out with the Americans remains today un-fulfilled. The Americans are not out and what is worse, the government allowseven more to come on national soil: multinational monopolies have moved herefrom Lebanon and the CIA moved its Middle East headquarters from Beirut toAthens. For the Americans, Greece continues to be a xefrago ambeli like it wasthroughout the dictatorship. A Latin American Banana Republic in the Southern

Mediterranean.8

Seeking to link political activism, class conflict and the armed struggle, thegroup released in April 1977 its manifesto, entitled Apantissi sta Kommata kaitis Organosseis [A Response to Political Parties and Organizations].9 The 28-page-long text presented the groups analysis and interpretations of politicalrealities in post-1974 Greece. As its title indicated, Apantissi sta Kommata kai tisOrganosseis was a polemical response against mainstream political parties,extra-parliamentary organizations of the left and the intelligentsia as well as acritique concerned with the prospects and obstacles of democratization inpost-junta Greece. 17N offered an analysis of a society that required violence inorder to be changed. The group, in fact, saw its violence as a logical andinevitable political consequence of national and constitutional processes.

8Richard Welch attack communique, dated December 1975.9Apantissi sta Kommata kai tis Organosseis was published by Athens daily Eleftherotypia in five

parts between 27 March and 4 April 1977. 17N sent the text to the Eleftherotypiaeditor with a coverletter stating: We are aware that your newspaper barely agrees with our positions but we aresending it to you for two reasons: 1) Yours was the only newspaper that did not try to distort thetruth in relation to our actions. 2) Your newspaper has been the only one which, in the past haspublished a number of texts by extra-parliamentary left whose positions it doesnt accept either.Last summer, it was the only newspaper that published a text written by the German fighter RalfPole. Our text, surely, is long. Yet, it could be published in two or three parts. We have sent thistext to your newspaper only. We shall wait one week. In case some pressures prevent you frompublishing it, we shall then send it elsewhere. Signature: Revolutionary Organization 17 Novem-

ber. April 1977.


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Greeces recent historical experience, it explained, had very clearly shown thatthere could be no peaceful transition to socialism.10 According to 17N, to evenmention transition to Socialism via peaceful, parliamentary, democratic meansis, for Greece at least, an idiocy.11

At the same time, 17N attacked all mainstream political parties, especially,

the two Greek communist parties (KKE). The group charged that KKE and theKKE-interior had become fully reconciled to the political institutions andpractices of the post-1974 regime and were continuing the work of the Kara-manlis government by effectively sabotaging the dynamics of class struggle.17N also devoted half of its 28-page manifesto to challenging the extra-parlia-mentary lefts notion of them as utopia-driven militants. The main criticism bythe extra-parliamentary left was that 17N-style terrorist violence was counter-productive: it could only provoke stronger state repression and have damagingconsequences for the movement. Predictably, 17N dismissed that as a classicrevisionist argument, arguing that its actions shouldnt be seen as isolated acts

of violence, but as parts of a long-term, multi-faceted revolutionary process.12

The group advocated revolutionary violence as a response to right-wingpressure and declining working-class radicalism. A belief that the organizedproletariat could shape history allowed 17N to view violence as legitimate,heroic and politically effective, and thus the most vital instrument of the socialwar against bourgeois democracy.

The only road to socialism: 17N in the 1980s

After the electoral landslide of Socialist PASOK in October 1981, 17N disap-

peared for 2 years. However, the assassination of US Navy Captain and headof the Joint US Military Advisory Group in Greece (JUSMAGG) naval divisionGeorge Tsantes and his Greek driver in November 1983 heralded the transitionof revenge terrorism to a full-scale terrorist campaign. After the attack, 17Nattacked Socialist premier Andreas Papandreou for renewing the US baseagreement and for breaking his pledges to pull out of both NATO and theEuropean Community. In 17Ns eyes, Papandreous betrayal was a strong andsufficient justification for terrorism and became the ideological catalyst whichconfirmed the groups view that popular revolutionary violence and notparliamentarism was the only road to socialism.

Less than 5 months after the Tsantes hit, on April 1984, 17N attacked butfailed to assassinate JUSMAGG Master Sergeant Robert Judd in a fresh attemptto draw attention to the continued operation of the US bases in Greece. Thegroup used the attacks as an occasion to declare war against the Americans,inaugurating a campaign of violence to remove them from Greece. It ischaracteristic that both the Tsantes and Judd communiques opened withidentical paragraphs: The bases will not leave with either elections or withparliamentary methods Only dynamic mass struggle and justified revol-utionary violence will force them out.13 The core argument of the commu-

10Ibid.11Ibid.12Ibid.1317N communique taking credit for the attack on Judd, dated April 1984.


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niques was that imperialist dependence is the main problem of the country.14

17N argued that decades of Western imperialist exploitation and oppressionhad deformed national political life and blocked the countrys economicsystem. Adapting a classic MarxistLeninist analysis of imperialism, the groupalso pointed out that this specific model of economic development imposed by

the American-led imperialist katestimeno (establishment) had durable conse-quences for the development of both social relations and the productive forcesin the country.15

By 1984, it was clear that 17N was determined to use any operational toolsand military tactics to achieve a complete removal of the US occupation forcesin Greece. The group became convinced that a constant level of military activitywould eventually lead to the complete paralysis of the American militaryforces in Greece. Following the basic mechanisms of the Provisional IRAstrategy in Northern Ireland and the RAF in Germany, 17N attempted to useits limited resources to wage a war of psychological attrition against Americans

stationed in Greece.16

At the same time, vitriolic attacks on the PASOKgovernment continued unabated. 17N charged that in spite of their messianicrhetoric the Socialists in office had come to emulate New Democracy govern-mental ethics and practices. Convinced that PASOK was now working for theRight, which explains why it has yet to be overthrown.17 17N took the viewthat there was no alternative but to widen the struggle through a maximumcoercive pressure on the Greek government.

17Ns determination to participate in the political process culminated inthe assassinations of the main representatives of LMAT or lumpen big

bourgeois class.18 The group devoted thousands of words to give substance to

the view that responsible for the deep polarizations running from top tobottom of Greeces inequality-riven society, were the countrys plutocrats, theLMAT. By attacking the main representatives of LMAT, 17N believed itattacked deceit, self-interest, scandalous privileges of tax exemptions, capitalistexploitation and corporate greed which were the root causes for the countryseconomic decline, de-industrialization, total stagnation and miserable working-class living standards. Combating LMAT-led capitalist exploitation was alsothe alleged motivation for the bomb attacks against several tax-revenue officesthat year. Describing the countrys taxation system as a mechanism of robbingthe peoples income, 17N used the bombing as a device to bring to widerattention what it saw as blatant provocation.19 The group charged that theswindler-state used taxation to steal from the working people to give back tothe sharks of LMAT and international imperialism.20 17N believed that Greek

14Ibid.15Ibid.16See M. L. R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland? The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Army,

Routledge, London, 1955; D. A. Pluchinsky, An organizational and operational analysis ofGermanys Red Army Faction terror group (19721991), in Yonah Alexander and D. A. Pluchinsky(eds), European Terrorism: Today and Tomorrow, Brasseys, McLean, VA, 1992, pp. 4393.

1717N attack communique on police bus, dated 26 November 1985.18See 17N Angelopoulos attack communique, undated. Dimitris Angelopoulos, a steel magnate,

was shot and killed in a central Athens street on his way to work on 8 April 1986.19Tax offices attack communique, dated 3 October 1986.20Ibid.


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society should no longer tolerate tax evasion on the present massive scale. Tomake the point clearer still, 17N said that more than 450 billion drachma[US$1.45 billion] in tax revenues flew abroad each year with disastrous effecton the populations living standards as it undermined the provision ofessential public services such as education, health, welfare, infrastructure and

national security.21

The national health service, in particular, was a 17N central concern: thegroup held that Greeces health system was a disgrace. Public expenditure onhealth was extremely low and the quality of services dismal. Health profession-als and managers, according to 17N, were primarily responsible for the poorquality of care and shambolic services. Instead of delivering decent healthcareto patients, 17N declared, doctors ruthlessly exploited them. The kneecappingattack of well-known neurosurgeon and owner of Engefalos medical centre,Zacharias Kapsalakis, in February 1987 was both an act of protest and dynamicresistance against dehumanization and a warning to all those doctorsbig

and otherwisepocketing brown envelopes from desperate patients in publichospitals and private clinics.22 The Kapsalakis communique closed with 17Ndemands for universal and equal healthcare provision and modern, clean andcomfortable hospitals.23

Increased tension in the Aegean between Greece and Turkey over oil-drill-ing rights and other territorial disputes absorbed most of the groups attentionduring 19871988. Its response to the Sismik-I crisis in March, which broughtthe two NATO allies close to war, was to attack US military targets in Athens.Holding NATO andthe USA in particularresponsible for the crisis, 17N

bombed two US military buses in the space of 4 months. 17N believed that the

USA was behind expansionist Turkish militarism. Referring to the Sismik-Iepisode, the group claimed that Washington was deliberately instigatingTurkeys expansionist designs in the Aegean and in Cyprus to increase Greekreliance on US military protection.

Opposition to US imperialism and impending GreekAmerican talks overthe extension of the 1983 US military bases agreement in Greece motivated a

barrage of 17N attacks. The 17N leadership assumed that a consistent level ofmilitary activity against US targets would put pressure on the US and theGreek governments. From April 1987 to the end of June 1988, five of thegroups six attacks were against American and Turkish targets. 17N declaredthat Greek national sovereignty was non-negotiable and warned that it wouldnot allow any Papandreou to sell it off.24 Until the Papandreou governmentclosed all American bases, removed the 164 nuclear warheads and took thecountry out of NATO, 17N was determined to continue its battle against themurdering American imperialists stationed on Greek soil at all costs.25

In 1988, corruption became the focus of attention for the group. Havingreached the conclusion that Greek politicians on all sides had cheating in their

bloodstream, 17N argued that the Bank of Crete scandal was symptomatic of

21Ibid.22Kapsalakis attack communique, dated 1 February 1987.23Ibid.24Attack communique on US military bus, dated 5 August 1987.25Attack communiques US military buses, dated 11 April and 5 August 1987, respectively.


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a society in a political, financial, cultural and moral crisis. The collapse of theSocialist governmentand the prosecution of Papandreou and four of hissenior ministers on corruption charges related to the multi-billion drachmaBank of Crete embezzlement and illegal phone-tappingconfirmed the groups

belief that there were deep flaws in Greek democracy. The Bank of Crete

scandal, 17N explained in a communique-commentary, was symptomatic of asociety in a political, financial, cultural and moral crisis.26 Greece, 17N argued,was in desperate need of catharsis, but effective catharsis and corruption-cleansing had to go hand-in-hand with the wholesale change of its political and

judicial world.27 Before 1989 was out, 17N had targeted two state magistrates,a former PASOK minister (one of the four Socialist ex-ministers indicted on

bribery charges) and New Democracys chief parliamentary spokesman andson-in-law of the partys leader, Pavlos Bakoyiannis, for their alleged involve-ment in the scandal. The aim of 17Ns intensive military activity was to keeppopular attention focused on the underlying political causes of the crisis and

unmask the key figures responsible for the looting of the Bank of Crete. Theseattacks were also intended to destabilize further the state and dictate the courseof events. 17N used the Bakoyiannis assassination in particular, to send clearwarning against the corrupt and rotten establishment.28 Soon afterwards, theCabinet, in an emergency session, increased the information-reward to 200million drachma, changed the entire police leadership, announced a new set ofcounter-terrorism measures and a serious hunt for 17N militants began.

Despite police pressure, 17N raids against an Athens police station, amilitary warehouse and the National Museum expanded the groups arsenalconsiderably and suggested the lengths to which 17N was prepared to go in

order to influence everyday political discourse. A solid mixture of ideologicalabsolutism and militant vanguardism which soon degenerated into cold-blooded extremism led the group to assert that its armed struggle was crucial.17N began to claim that its 15-year armed struggle was the only remaininglegitimate and moral struggle against the homicidal and barbaric politicalregime.29

In the same period, 17Ns ideological antipathy towards the new NewDemocracy government was fortified by Konstantinos Mitsotakiss near-dog-matic free-market approach. The then premiers determination to privatize orclose 40 heavily indebted industries under state control infuriated the group.Although these companies had been draining state resources for years, 17Nsaw New Democracys economic policy as a sustained assault against thelabour force and the public sector. At an ideological level, 17N believed thatNew Democracys conservatism with its neo-liberal, integrationist policy,served the interests of foreign capital and multinationals and aided Americanglobal economic hegemony. Having reviewed New Democracys economicpolicy stance, the group concluded that the main motivation behind the sale ofassets and industrial relations legislation, presented by the Mitsotakis govern-

26Communique-commentary on the Bank of Crete scandal, dated 11 November 1988.27Ibid.28Bakoyiannis attack communique, dated 18 September 1989.2917N communique-commentary, dated 9 October 1989.


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ment as part of a plan to revive and modernize the Greek economy, was anattempted structural rejuvenation of Greek capitalism.

Nihilism, exhibitionism and conspiracy-theorizing: 17N in the 1990s17N opposition to EC financial arrangements and the US-led Operation DesertStorm in the Persian Gulf motivated a wave of attacks on European andAtlanticist targets throughout 1991. Strikes on British and American banks,the British Petroleum (BP) offices and the French military attache maintainedan astonishing momentum and expressed the groups angry reaction againstWestern military intervention. 17N saw the 19901991 Gulf War against Iraq asa classic case of military aggression by the American imperialist machine. Thesymbolic assassination of US Air Force Sergeant Ronald Stewart in March 1991confirmed this view. 17N used the attack on Stewart to underline the fact that

the Kuwaiti crisis had nothing to do with respect of international law andeverything to do with the imposition of an American-dominated new worldorder in the region.30

After the war, US President George Bush became a particular focus fordenunciation by the group. The USAs ideological triumph in the cold war andits emergence in the early 1990s as the sole superpower was greeted with deepdisdain. The July 1991 US presidential official visit in Athens aggravated 17Nsresentment for Bush and American imperialism and its self-serving globalistvision of a New World Order. The group tried to use the Bush visit to force theCyprus issue to the forefront of national debate. After targeting three Turkish

diplomats, 17N declared that Bush had come to impose (through the agentgovernment of petty Mitsotakis)31 a partition-confederation solution to theCyprus problem, which does not include full withdrawal of the Turkishoccupation troops and the return of all Greek Cypriots refugees to theirhomes.32 Comparing Sadam Husseins attack on Kuwait to the Turkish in-vasion of Northern Cyprus, 17N accused the Euro-Atlantic community ofdouble standards in the application of international law.

After 1991, 17Ns attitude towards the practice of violence changed. Thefailed rocket attack against the New Democracy Finance Minister, YiannisPaleokrassas, in the rush-hour Athens city centre in July 1992, which resultedin a civilian death and numerous casualties, signalled an apparent inability toimpose control over the military instrument. Persistent efforts by 17N to defendits action and transfer blame for the casualties onto the police authorities alsorevealed a growing detachment from reality. Attacked by the media for blind,indiscriminate terrorism, 17N argued that the police authorities deliberately leftthe 20-year-old student, Thanos Axarlian, to bleed to death in a crude attemptto use the incident against the group. However, the kneecapping of aninconspicuous New Democracy backbencher, Eleftherios Papadimitriou, 4months later, for supposedly endorsing his leaders policy of selling off public

3017N attack communique on Ronald Steward, dated 12 March 1991.3117N attack communique on Turkish diplomat Cettin Gorgu, dated 7 October 1991.3217N attack communique against Turkish diplomats Deniz Bolukbasi and Nilgun Kececi, dated

16 July 1991.


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property33 offered additional evidence of the groups confused thinking andnihilistic mind-set.

The release of a document entitled Manifesto 1992, on 17 November 1992,confirmed that the assaults against Paleokrassas and Papadimitriou were partof a radical shift in the groups attitude and focus. A mixture of political

analysis, social commentary and polemical hyperbole, Manifesto 1992, repre-sented a 17N attempt to display its revolutionary optimism and ideologicalcontinuity.34 At the same time, the 15-page document was organizationallyordered to explain and justify the groups continuing presence on the post-1974political scene. Attacking parliamentarism, capitalist democracy and re-formism, 17N re-affirmed its ambition to organize working-class resistance andsustain the popular movement in its revolutionary mission. Despite theconfident rhetoric ofManifesto 1992, 17N no longer seemed to have a coherentpolitical strategy. The groups language, at the same time, became insistently

bombastic, repetitive and sententious in tone.

17N pledges to sustain a consistent level of military activity failed tomaterialize as the rate of violence continued to decline. By 1995 the level of 17Nattacks had fallen to one, down from a peak of 22 in 1991. At the same time,17N motives became more difficult to decipher. The mortaring of MEGA TVstudios in March 1995 during the stations main evening news confirmed theimpression that 17Ns attachment to unregulated violence had become the onlyway for the group to maintain its ideological identity and preserve its raisondetre. Claiming credit for the attack, 17N tried to deflect criticism and vindicateits extremism by suggesting a CIAFBIGreek media conspiracy plot againstthe group!

During that time, 17N began to systematically attack the new Socialistpremier, Costas Simitis, for his attempts to normalize relations with Turkeyand bring Greece closer to the Euro-Atlantic community. Simitis outraged 17Nin 1996 when, in a speech in the Greek Parliament, hours after the Imia crisiswas defused, he thanked the US government for their diplomatic intervention.17N saw the Imia incident35 as a disgraceful politico-military defeat for Greece(the Greek Waterloo, in the groups words) and denounced Simitis for hishandling of the episode. The group portrayed the Greek premier as a stooge ofthe Americans, the EU and the LMATthe best available after Papandreousresignation.36

The group always saw the application of violence as the most effective formof political pressure against a US-run world-disorder. 17Ns reaction toNATOs strategy towards the Balkans led to the assassination of the British

3317N attack communique on New Democracy MP Eleftherios Papadimitriou, dated December1992.

34Manifesto 1992, dated 17 November 1992.35In January 1996, Greece and Turkey almost went to war over the Aegean islet of Imia and it

was only the intervention of US President Bill Clinton and his assistant Secretary of State, RichardHolbrooke, that actually prevented armed conflict between the two NATO allies.

3617N communique claiming responsibility for the Peratikos assassination in Eleftherotypia, 30May 1997. Shipowner Costas Peratikos was ambushed and killed by 17N in broad daylight in a

busy Piraeus street. 17N said that Peratikos was targeted because he was responsible for thefraught privatization of the Elefsina shipyards, which his shipping group bought in 1992 andclosed 3 years later.


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embassy military attache in Athens, Brigadier Stephen Saunders, its last hitbefore the summer 2002 arrests. 17N justified its act as a response to amurderous imperialist war.37 NATOs military campaign in Yugoslavia, thegroup declared, was never a humanitarian mission in the region but an attackon a sovereign state in blatant violation of long-standing international agree-

ments and conventions. Presenting the NATO leaders as a self-constitutedposse of international vigilantes, 17N further argued that NATOs strategytowards the Balkans had been shaped by the USAs strategic interests andgeo-political ambitions in Europe rather than the local needs for conflictresolution and peacekeeping. According to the group, the Wests failure to seekauthorization from the UN security council for the 78-day campaign of bomb-ing against targets in Kosovo and Serbia represented the spirit of the newglobalized international conscience. By attacking Stephen Saunders, 17Nthought it attacked the inbred arrogance of the Anglo-Saxon political andmilitary establishment and its deeply-rooted belief that they are superior

people and therefore legalized to annihilate through sanctions and bombard-ment pariah nations bringing misery, disease and death upon innocentpeople.38

Fighting for revolution?

Throughout its long campaign, the group maintained an extremely one-dimen-sional view of a world peopled by heroes and villains. Combining ideologicalrigidity, fanatical nationalism, contempt for the existing order and a cult ofviolence for its own sake, 17N stubbornly refused to accept that its eclectic

belief system was incompatible with modern democratic principles.In Korydallos court, Dimitris Koufodinas39 argued that from a historical

perspective and given the revolutionary movements course in Greece, the end

3717N communique on Brigadier Stephen Saunders, dated March 2000.3817N attack communique on Brigadier Stephen Saunders, dated March 2000.39Dimitris Koufodinas was born in 1958 in the village of Terpni, 45 kilometres away from the

city of Serres in northern Greece. Terpni was, as it remains today, a typical Greek northern villagethat prides itself on the ordinariness of its daily life and the unexciting decency of its people. In1971, when Koufodinas was 13, his father moved the family to Athens at a time when the Greekcapital was in turmoil because of the Colonels dictatorial regime. Metapolitefsi, the 1974 transition

from dictatorship to democracy, seems to have had a strong impact on Koufodinas early politicalformation. The 1974 transition, it has to be emphasized, was not the result of a clear and sharp

break with the Colonels junta but the product of a whole range of compromises and negotiationsbetween elite-level political actors and the military. Metapolitefsior junta by another name as 17Ncalled the transition in several communiques had a formative influence on Koufodinas politiciza-tion and his early involvement in student politics attests to that. Member of PASOKs SocialistPAMK youth movement from secondary school, Koufodinas intensified his activism when heenrolled in 1977 in the Athens University to read economics. Koufodinas is remembered bysecondary school friend, Nikos Giannopoulos, who testified in court, as someone whose depth andintellect were impressive for his age and who could have, had he stayed on course, landed himselfat a later stage an important job in party-politics or the state bureaucracy. Another friend from hisdays of student activism, remembered Koufodinas as a calm, articulate young man with guts andideological consistency. Family relatives also described Koufodinas as somebody who never likedupsetting people. Koufodinas broke family ties in 1983, almost a year before the attemptedassassination of US Army Sergeant Robert Judd which, according to the indictment, was Koufod-inas operational debut with the group.


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of 17Ns story [had] yet to be written.40 Koufodinas believed that 17N and 17Nalone continued to represent in Greece a pure and undefiled MarxistLeninistfaith, dismissing the universal designation of them as terrorists and of theiractions as terrorism. Challenging the courts tendency in depicting their acts asacts of senseless barbarity devoid of any serious political content, Koufodinas

asserted that this present could not put 17N on trial for what 17N really was.41

In his view, 17N

was, as the group had persistently stated from the very beginning, an organiza-tion of simple, popular fighters. And since it came from the guts of the populace,it was the populaces voice that 17N listened to, and it was the populaces owninterests that it tried to serve.42

Going back to the groups armed debut in 1975 and the assassination of theCIAs station chief in Athens, Richard Welch, Koufodinas tried to explainwhere 17N draw inspiration and motivation from for its campaign. In Decem-

ber 75, he stated, a group of fighters decide to execute CIAs station chief inAthens. In the words of Koufodinas there

[couldnt] be a more clear and justified action. CIAs station chief was andremains the long hand of American power in our country. Running a 5th columnof a few hundred agents positioned in neuralgic posts inside the government,the state bureaucracy, the Army, the political parties and the media, he controlsand directs the political, social and economic life of our country in relation to theinterests of the USA. The Greek people know full well what CIA was all about,know the role it has played since the Civil War. [The role it had played] in everyelection, especially the 1961 election of rigging and violence; in the assassinationof [Greek MP] Lambrakis, and the military junta and the tragedy of Cyprus.

Why the Cyprus dossier has not been opened yet? Whatever happened to yourjustice and your democracy? Why so much selectivity for what is a crime andwho is really a criminal? Who let the [junta] torturers walk free? Was it thepeople or was it your independent justice? For, the Greek people know exactlywhy the CIAs station chief in Greece was executed. What they didnt knowexactly was who were behind this action and that was thanks to a campaign ofdisinformation, distortion and disorientation by the government, the politicalparties and the media. When the campaign of 17N began, a campaign ofdisinformation began with it and still continues to this day.43

At the same time, in an attempt to impose retrospective historical significanceon what 17N were and did, Koufodinas claimed that

the left which 17N belonged to was the left of Lenin, Che Guevara andVelouchiotis; the left of the October, Spanish, Chinese and Cuban revolutions;the left of the anticolonial revolutions in Algeria and Vietnam, the left of May 68and November 73; the left of urban guerrilla warfare.44

For Koufodinas, one could say anything one liked about 17N, except that theywere something other than what they always claimed to be and showedthemselves to be in all of their actions. 17Ns activity, he further argued, had

40Court proceedings, Korydallos prison chambers, 24 July 2003.41Ibid.42Ibid.43Ibid.44Ibid.


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the very same characteristics with the activity of the [Greek] resistance.Koufodinas did not attempt to present himself as a modern-day Aris Velouch-iotis, the charismatic guerrilla leader and founder of ELAS (the Greek PeoplesLiberation Army), but it quickly became apparent that he idolized him.

When Aris would enter a village and give under the nose of the Germans aspeech in the village square with his armed partisans in formation, he was bothdemonstrating that armed resistance was possible and cultivating the ground forfurther activity.45

By connecting ELASs military aims and practices to these of 17N, Koufodinaswanted to show that the groups armed struggle taking place in a country thathas experienced humiliation, exclusion, state-terrorism, the absolute power ofplutocrats, policemen and military judges was merely defensive.46

Unlike Alexandros Giotopoulos,47 the groups chief ideologue, who deniedparticipation in 17N, Koufodinas as one of the leaders and chief organizer ofthe organizations operations took responsibility for the entire 17N experienceand sought to defend their violent actions by placing them in the political andhistorical context of the period. An emblematic personality of 17N terrorismDimitris Koufodinas embraced the view that Greeces self-negating democ-racy necessitated exactly that kind of political violence they had undertaken.

45Ibid.46Ibid.47The 59-year-old Giotopoulos, whose fingerprints were identified by Greek police in 17Ns two

Athens hideaways containing the groups arsenal, maintained throughout the trial that he had noinvolvement whatsoever with 17N. In denying all 963 charges against him, Giotopoulos asserted

that the role of the [17N] leader was a police fabrication and that the main reason why he wasput behind bars was because the Americans, the British and their collaborators in the Greekgovernment want it that. According to Giotopoulos, the charges were nothing more than a cheapconstruct of the Americans and British signed by prosecutors and former provincial police and

based on confessions taken in a hospital intensive care unit from people destroyed by psychotropicdrugs and blackmail, referring to Savvas Xiros hospital confession, soon after the June 2002

botched bomb attack. Giotopoulos also denied that handwritten corrections on drafts of 17Nproclamations were his own as the state prosecutor charged and claimed that his fingerprints,found in 17N safe houses, including a left thumbprint on a mobile phone manual, were transferred

by agents onto movable objects. Giotopoulos was convicted as the clear mastermind and leaderof 17N. The prosecutor characterized him the root of evil both before and after his arrest andproposed for him a sentencing that amounted to 2412 years which is what Giotopoulos eventually

received. Giotopoulos defence team maintained throughout that physical evidence was scant andthat his conviction was basically the product of testimonies by other accused 17N members, aviolation of the Greek criminal codes provision which specifically states that the testimony of aguilty person alone cannot be sufficient in establishing guilt. Son of a prominent Trotskyitetheoretician and activist of the pre-World War II era, Giotopoulos studied in France during theyears of the Colonels junta, where in 1969 he helped found the radical May 29 movement, whichadvocated armed rebellion against the Greek military regime. In 1971 he was found guilty inabsentia by the Greek authorities of creating an armed organization and was sentenced to 5 yearsin jail. He remained in Paris where he founded a new group, the Popular Armed Struggle (LEA),which from its inception was divided over how to direct its energies. Giotopoulos was in favourof aggressive acts of urban guerrilla warfare and split from the group with a small clique of others.Returning to Athens after the fall of the Colonels regime in 1975, he came, according to Greekpolice files, into contact with members of Greeces other prominent urban guerrilla groupRevolutionary Popular Struggle (ELA) and attempted unsuccessfully to persuade them to sign onto a plan to abduct CIA station chief Richard Welch. Welch was eventually shot dead outside hishome, on 23 December 1975, by 17N.


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Obsessively clinging to his conviction that they took on the capitalist state andits agents, Koufodinas maintained that 17N were attempting to create aninsurrectionary mood which would empower Greek people into revolutionarypolitical action.

Alexandros Giotopoulos, on the other hand, maintained throughout the

trial that he had no involvement whatsoever with the group. In denying all 963charges against him, Giotopoulos asserted that the role of the [17N] leader wasa police fabrication and that the main reason why he was put behind bars was

because the Americans, the British and their collaborators in the Greekgovernment want it that.48 At the same time, Giotopoulos put a good deal ofeffort in arguing that 17N must have been a horizontal cell organization withno leadership. At the same time, Giotopoulos placed the groups actions in apolitical environment which, in his view, necessitated armed intervention indaily life. From his point of view, 17N activity was not terrorism but an armedpolitical struggle with the aim of toppling the capitalist regime in favour of an

anti-bureaucratic form of socialism that would give power to the people.49

Giotopoulos also seemed to believe that resort to armed violence was areasonable and calculated response to certain social and political circumstances.As such, he saw militant opposition as the only effective form of politicalpressure against American hegemonism and an unresponsive regime.

According to Giotopoulos analysis, it was the

perpetuation of the dependence on the USA, the reproduction of huge economicinequalities and the total absence of a basic welfare state together with the lowlevel of workers income and the disappearance of agricultural income whichdrove young people to take up arms against representatives of dominant circles,

place bombs against symbolic targets and violently clash with repressive mech-anisms.50

Giotopoulos attempts to link American hegemonism to long-standing dom-estic problems were reminiscent of 17Ns Welch communique whereby 17Nwriters had argued that American presence on national soil was the root causeof Greeces underdevelopment and responsible for its perpetuation.51

Overall, Giotopoulos court testimony shed no light on any major issuesconcerning the groups prehistory, motives, purposes and notions of politicalpower, though he spoke (in the few times when he chose to speak) with anauthority rivalled only by that of Dimitris Koufodinas. When asked by theChief Judge if he would find the courage like his co-defendant Koufodinas toaccept responsibility of his past actions, Giotopoulos characteristic reply was:thats exactly what I would have done, had I actually been the leader.52

However, one cannot but be struck by Giotopoulos overall stance. Even if onesets aside the ludicrousness of his claim that he has been framed in anAnglo-American conspiracy because of his activity against the 196774 Greek

48Korydallos prison court chambers, 6 March 2003.49Pre-trial Giotopoulos interview to provincial newspaper Lamiakos Typos, 5 October 2002.50Ibid.51The Welch communique, dated December 1975, charged that US imperialism [was] the

Number One enemy of the people and held the Americans responsible for decades of innumer-able humiliations, calamities and crimes inflicted upon the Greek people.

52Korydallos prison court chambers, 16 March 2003.


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dictatorship, the strongest aspect was that he relied up to the end on a heavydose of defiance and mystique as if such mystique would somehow effacecritique. Denouncing the hearing as a travesty of justice (the decision isridiculous, the entire world is laughing) and bombastically calling todaysGreece as a modern colony of the United States, Giotopoulos, like the group

he led, refused to the very end to modify his ideological rigidity and doctrinalinflexibility and tried to construct a language with which to publicize hispolitical existence, claim legitimacy and pose as a representative of the entirecommunity.

In that sense, Giotopoulos, like the majority of 17N members had beenimpervious to political logic. Although the group saw its violence as anaudacious protest against the katestimeno (establishment), it never moved

beyond terrorism to provoke a situation of crisis for the Greek establishmentwhich it so bitterly opposed. Given its conception of political intervention andextra-parliamentary activism, 17Ns organizational evolution was always cer-

tain to culminate into a full-scale campaign of terrorist violence. Ignoring thefact that violence should not take the place of the political purpose, norobliterate it,53 17N continued the sporadic killing and wounding of high-profile targets as the most effective way to crystallize public disaffectionagainst the regime and embed itself in mainstream consciousness.

Described in a 6600-page ruling as the toughest and most murderous of all[domestic] organizations, 17N was seen by the court as the mixture of formeranti-junta resistance fighters and dogmatic leftists who saw Greeces post-1974transition to democracy as a perverse continuation of the Colonels dictator-ship.54 17N, according to the ruling, was founded in 1974 by AlexandrosGiotopoulos, Nikos Papanastasiou, Pavlos Serifis and two other yet unknown

individuals, one of them being a pretty-looking, blonde woman named Anna.55The court found Giotopoulos to be the intellectual helmsman who conveyedthe death orders but it also expressed the conviction that 17N was run by anexecutive secretariat.56 The three-member Athens Criminal Appeals Court alsoconcluded that the executive secretariat determined the groups targeting withGiotopoulos transmitting the orders to the cells and members of the organiza-tions.57 The ruling also described Dimitris Koufodinas as the groups chiefrecruiter. Prospective members, it stated, were not initially informed that theywere acting on behalf of 17N and by the time they found out, it was eitherimpossible or extremely difficult to leave58as it was the case with Salonica

schoolteacher and poet, Costas Tellios.59

Addressing widespread legal and53Peter Paret, Clausewitz, in P. Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, Oxford University Press,

Oxford, 1986, p. 200.54The court produced, 6 months after the sentences were handed down, a 6600-page document

explaining the ruling in exhaustive detail even though the president of the Athens appeals courtsadministration, Haridimos Papadakis, initially declined to provide journalistswho had freeaccess to the courtroom throughout the trialwith copies. A very unusual departure from thecustomary practice, it must be said. Copies were eventually made available but only after thedecision had created a furore within the media and legal communities.

55See Athens Criminal Appeals Court ruling document.56Ibid.57

Ibid.58Ibid.59Recruited in 1988 by Christodoulos Xiros, Tellios claimed that he reluctantly took part in four

operations fearing that he might be killed if he declined.


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media criticism that the convictions of several of the accused were based ontestimony by others charged as 17N members, the court said that the rule that[the testimony of] a guilty person cannot make another person guilty appliedonly in cases where a single accused individual offered incriminating testi-mony against another accused individual. The evidentiary limitation provided

by the law, the ruling further explained, applies only where one testimony orconfession is involved, and not that of more charged individuals.60 At the sametime, the ruling dismissed charges of torture voiced during the trial byconvicted 17N members like Savvas Xiros and Vassilis Tzortzatos.

Overall, what the 6600-page ruling seems to be suggesting is that 17N,despite of some group members attempts to justify their actions as anextension of a historically defined Greek communist tradition and a quest fornational independence and nationhood, was not an authentic revolutionarygroup but a clandestine band of disillusioned armed militants with a flair forrevolutionary rhetoric and symbolism. And although history will judge 17N as

a failed group, this does not alter the fact that Alexandros Giotopoulos andDimitris Koufodinas succeeded in running rings round the Greek authoritiesprimarily because they took advantage of the fact that Greeces nationalcounter-terrorism effort was conducted for more than two decades against a

background of polarization, confrontation and rivalry.61 Between the police andthe intelligence services, between government and opposition, between differ-ent sections of the Greek society. No national consensus, no compromise, nocooperation. Unlike Italys Red Brigades, 17N never held a nation to ransomthrough terror but it came closer than anyone else in the countrys 30-yearhistory of post-1974 democracy to making the Greek state appear nave, inept

and politically powerless.

George Kassimeris is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Wolver-hampton, UK, and the author ofEuropes Last Red Terrorists: The RevolutionaryOrganization 17 November (Hurst and Co. and New York University Press).

Address for correspondence: History & Governance Research Institute, HLSS,Millennium City Building, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton,WV1 1SB, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

60Ibid.61On Greeces poor anti-terrorism efforts see George Kassimeris, Europes Last Red Terrorists: The

Revolutionary Organization 17 November, Hurst & Co., London, 2001, pp. 152198.


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