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Two Greeks convicted for terrorism

A Greek court yesterday convicted two men as the chief assassin and the mastermind of the November 17 guerrilla group, which killed prominent Greeks as well as British, Turkish and US diplomats in a 27-year reign of fear.

Three judges delivered the verdicts at the end of a marathon trial involving 19 accused members of November 17. There was no jury because terrorism charges were involved.

The convictions and cracking of the group's network removed a major security concern ahead of next summer's Olympic Games in Athens.

The group's leader, Alexandros Giotopoulos, 59, was found guilty of plotting several murders, including the last killing, a drive-by shooting of British military attache Stephen Saunders in 2000.

Saunders widow, Heather, said after the verdict: "That's what we hoped for."

"At the end of the day nobody really wins in this situation, but if they are taken off the streets for a while and given a dose of their own medicine -- albeit no comparison to what we suffered -- then that, perhaps, is justice," Saunders told BBC radio.

Chief Judge Michalis Margaritis said in delivering the judgement against Giotopoulos: "The court finds Alexandros Giotopoulos guilty of instigating murder."

Giotopoulos is a mathematician who was a student in Paris in the 1960s and is the son of Greece's most prominent Trotskyite.

The court found beekeeper Dimitris Koufodinas, the main hitman, guilty of Saunders' murder. It was one of 253 charges against the cold-blooded killer known as "Poison Hand."

November 17, a radical leftist group calling for a Marxist society in Greece, was named after the date of a 1973 student uprising crushed by Greece's then ruling military.

The group is accused of murdering 23 Greeks as well as British, US and Turkish diplomats in a reign of fear that began with the 1975 killing of CIA Athens chief Richard Welch.

A 20-year statute of limitation for murder means there will be no punishment for November 17's first four assassinations, including Welch's killing. Sentences will be passed later this week.
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