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| Europe |
| Greeks bust November 17th gang... |
| 2002-07-18 |
| In a major breakthrough against the elusive November 17 terrorist gang, Greek police announced Thursday that three members of the group confessed to a series of bombings and other killings, including the murders of military attaches from both the United States and Britain. Alexandros Giotopoulos, 58, the chief ideologist and a major leader of the group, was in custody. Police said he was taken off a hydrofoil leaving the eastern Aegean island of Lipsi. Snagged the bastard, did they? Good job! It's amazing, the amount of information large men with moustaches and truncheons can extract from tough guys... "From various evidence in the investigation we began to build a picture of the ideological instructor of the organization and the writer of its proclamations,'' police chief Fotis Nassiakos said of Giotopoulus. The confessions and capture of a leading figure in the group marked the first crack in Europe's most elusive terrorist organization since the group first appeared in 1975 with the assassination of Richard Welch, the CIA's station chief in Athens. Authorities scored their first-ever success against the organization after a botched June 29 bombing in the busy tourist port of Piraeus. Savas Xiros, a 40-year-old painter of religious icons and brother of two of the men who have confessed, was severely wounded when the bomb he allegedly was carrying exploded prematurely. He remains in the hospital and has not been charged. Turns out the group had less than a dozen members. So they've got three in custody who've confessed, nabbed the Brains of the Outfit, and there's only half of another one left vegetating in a hospital bed. "Less than a dozen" means a max of 11, so 11 less 5 leaves at most a half dozen of these goobers still at large. With at least one of the three singing — that's how they got Mr Brains — the number could even go down to the optimal zero. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |