On This Day

1875: Charilaos Trikoupis published his famous article “Who is to blame?” (“Tis ptaiei?”) in Athens daily “Times” (“Kairoi”) concerning the decadence of the government. The public outcry that followed brought down the Dimitrios Voulgaris government.

1917: Greece entered World War I.

1917: Eleftherios Venizelos declared King Constantine’s abolition of the 1915 Parliament unconstitutional. He controversially brought back the 1915 Parliament which went down in history as “The Parliament of the Lazaroi”.

2002: A bomb that detonated in the hands of Savvas Xeros started a chain reaction of arrests of Novermber 17th members.

Births: Michalis Menidiatis, laika singer (1932)

The Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17N) conducted terrorist attacks in Greece for 27 years (1975-2002), making it the most durable of the militant Leftist revolutionary groups that emerged from the European radical milieu of the 1970s. 17N went to great lengths in its communiqués — and eventually in trial testimony — to position itself as the only authentic, progressive political force in post-Junta Greece. In spite of the absence of any demonstrable mass political constituency, 17N’s leaders convinced themselves that they represented the vanguard of political change in the country.

But 17N was never an authentic revolutionary group. Instead, it was a clandestine band of disillusioned armed militants with a flair for revolutionary rhetoric and symbolism for whom terrorism had become a way of life: a career. Its members lived in a closed, self-referential world where terrorism became a way of life from which it was impossible to walk away or to confront reality. Feeling themselves to be a genuine instrument of history, 17N leaders believed that it did not matter that there could never be a military victory as long as 17N, ‘intervened’ and ‘resisted.’ For their operational leader, Dimitris Koufodinas, and many of his comrades what was important was the act of ‘resistance’ itself and the notion that blood and death, even one’s own, would carry the mission forward, ultimately securing 17N a place in history.

The long history of Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17N)’s terrorism in Greece ended on 5 September 2002, when the group’s leader of operations, Dimitris Koufodinas, turned himself in to the police after two months on the run. Koufodinas pulled up at police headquarters on Alexandras Avenue in a taxi at 2.35 pm, dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt, sunglasses, and a jockey. “I am Dimitris Koufodinas and I have come to turn myself in,” he told the stunned duty officer before being taken to the twelfth floor of the anti-terrorism squad.

Koufodinas had been on the run since 29 June 2002 when a bomb being carried by Savvas Xiros, a senior 17N gunman, detonated prematurely in Piraeus. Soon after, from his hospital bed and apparently fearing for his life, Xiros gave the prosecutor in charge of the anti-terrorism investigation critical information that fuelled a chain reaction of arrests, leading in less than a month to the dismantling of the group which had acted with impunity for 27 years.

One might think that it would be hard to take seriously a secret organization that has a flag and publishes a photograph like this which looks like it comes out of Joseph McCarthy’s worst nightmare. But from 1975 to 2000 the November 17th  Terrorist Organization committed dozens of attacks and murdered 23 people in Greece. The success of the group in avoiding capture had more to do with luck than anything else and despite going for 27 years without the capture of one member, a bumbled bombing attempt in the summer of 2002 brought the organization crashing down like a house of cards. This is a list of their exploits, or at least the ones we know about.:

December 12 1975: Murder of CIA Station Chief Richard Welch in Psychiko
December 13 1976: Assassination of Police officer Evangelos Mallios who had been discharged after torturing prisoners during the Junta
January 16 1980: Murder of MAT(Riot Squad) Deputy Director Pantelis Petrou and his driver in Pangrati
November 15 1980: US Navy Captain George Tsantes who is the head of JUSMAGG is killed with his driver Nikos Veloutsos, an employee of the US Embassy, on Kiffissia Avenue in Psychiko
August 3rd 1984: Failed attempt against JUSMAGG officer Robert Judd near the US Airbase at Hellenikon
February 21 1985: Publisher Nikos Momferatos of the daily paper Apogevmatini and his driver are killed in Kolonaki
November 26 1985: Officer Ioannis Georgakopoulos is killed when a bomb explodes near a MAT bus near the Hilton
April 8 1986: Industrialist Dimitris Angelopoulos, chairman of Halivourgiki Steel Company and friend of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou is killed while leaving his home in Koloniki.
October 5 1986: Bomb attacks on Tax Offices
February 4th 1987: Attack on Dr Zacharias Kapsalakis
April 24 1987: Bomb attack on US Air Force bus. 16 American soldiers and the driver are injured.
August 10 1987: Remote control car bomb injures 11 American soldiers on a bus in Kavouri.
January 21 1988: Failed assassination on US official George Karos
March 1 1988: Murder of Industrialist Alexandros Athanasiades-Bodosakis on Kiffisias Avenue in Filothei
June 28 1988: Assassination of US Military Attache Wiliam Nordeen by booby-trapped car in Kifissia.
August 15 1988: Attack on police station in Vyronas. Without firing a shot November 17th members tie up a number of police officers and leave with cache of weapons and ammunition.
January 10 1989: Public Prosecutor Constantine Androulidakis is wounded in the legs but dies a month later.
May 8 1989: Former Minister Giorgos Petsos is inured in a bomb attack in Filothei
September 26 1989: Pavlos Bakoyiannis, New Democracy Parliamentary spokesman and son-in-law of party leader Constantine Mitsotakis is shot and killed allegedly for his part in the Bank of Crete scandal. He was the husband of Dora Bakoyiannis and the first active politician to be killed.
December 25 1989: Anti-tank rockets and ammunition are stolen from a base in Larissa
May 15 1990: Bazookas are stolen from the Athens War Museum.
November 20 1990: Rocket attack on the armored limousine of businessan Vardis Vardinoyiannis, who escapes unharmed.
March 13 1991: Remote controlled bomb kills US Army Sergeant Ronald Stewart in Glyfada
July 16 1991: Turkish charge-d’affaires Deniz Bulikbasi is injured by a car bomb.
September 7 1991: Cetin Giorku, Turkish assistant press attache is shot and killed in his car in Pangrati
November 2 1991: Policeman Yiannis Varis is killed and 6 other policemen are inured by rocket and grenade attack on a MAT bus in Exarchia.
July 14 1992: Finance Minister Ioannis Palaiokrassas escapes injury when his limousine is attacked by rockets but passerby Athanasios Axarlian, and 22 year old student is killed on Voulis street.
December 21 1992: New Democracy party deputy chairman Eleftherios Papadimitriou is shot but not killed.
January 24 1994: Michalis Vranopoulos, the former governer of the National Bank of Greece is killed outside his office in Koloniki
July 4 1994: Turkish Diplomat Omer Sipahioglou is shot and killed in Palio Faliron
March 15 1995: Rocket attack on MEGA TV studios during the evening news causes damage but no deaths.
February 15 1996: Mortar attack on the US Embassy in Athens.
May 25 1997: Shipowner Costas Peratikos is killed in Pireaus.
May 17 1999: Rocket attack on German Ambassador’s residence in retaliation for the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
May 17 2000: Stephen Saunders, the British defense attache is murdered while stopped in traffic in Filothei.
June 29 2002: A bomb that detonates in the hands of Savvas Xeros starts a chain reaction of arrests of Novermber 17th members.