Greek anti-terror police officer shot dead guarding home of witness

A plain-clothes policeman was shot dead in Athens early this morning as he was about to go on duty guarding the home of a key witness in Greece's biggest terrorist trial.

Two gunmen sprayed the officer with bullets as he was about to get into an unmarked car to guard the home of Sophia Kyriakidou. Her ex-husband Angeletos Kanas has been charged with belonging to the Revolutionary Popular Struggle, an urban guerrilla group believed to be a spin-off from the more notorious 17 November group which was uprooted seven years ago.

She had been a key protected witness in the mass trial of the 17 November defendants in March 2003.

Although she had been under constant discreet police protection since then, neither her identity nor her address had been changed. Witnesses to the murder said that the protection had been widely known in the densely-populated Patissia quarter where she lived.
Philippos Koutsaftis, the coroner called in for an initial examination of the policeman's body, said he counted 22 cartridges at the scene of the attack. "He was hit repeatedly on the left side of the body and in the head," Mr Koutsaftis said. "He didn't have time to pull his own gun."

The terrorist attack appeared to be the most serious since Bridagier Stephen Saunders, the British military attache in Athens, was gunned down by 17 November in June 2000, in what turned out to be that group's last political murder before its key members were run to ground two years later.

The news stunned Greeks who had been hoping for an international publicity boost for their country with the opening of the new Acropolis Museum, scheduled for Saturday. Heads of state and government from around the world are expected to begin arriving for the extravaganza on Friday.

In January an Athens policeman was critically wounded in a pre-dawn terrorist attack, weeks after serious anarchist rioting had all but devastated the centre of the city.

Police sources in Athens today claimed that Greece's anti-terrorism squad, set up with the aid of Scotland Yard several years ago, had been gutted by apparently arbitrary transfers and firings, undermining the squad's morale and effectiveness.

Source:The times