4 arrested in Athens for urban guerrilla activities

Sept. 24, 2009 Libcom.org

Four young persons were arrested in relation to urban guerrilla warfare activities after anti-terrorist police stormed a house in north Athens hours after bomb attack against MP apartment.

On Wen. 23/09 evening the greek antiterrorist police stormed a two-story house in Chalandri, a middle-class neighborhood in the north of Athens in relation to urban guerrilla warfare activities. Although the police initially claimed that it has been watching the house for some time in relation to what it called "anti-authoritarian and anarchist attacks", the anti-terrorist rep has gone back on earlier statements claiming: "None of the persons or places were being watched; we have a State of Justice where no greek citizen or place is watched".

According to the press, which is reproducing masses of rumors and contradictory information, the police got the the green light to storm the Chalandri house after a bomb damaged the apartment of two Socialist Party (PASOK) MPs, Louka Katseli and her husband, the ex-Minister of Education Ger. Arsenis, whose educational reform had caused a long pupil and student uprising in 1998. The bomb which was announced to the press half an hour before ignition did only limited damage to the flat in the ruling class neighborhood of Kolonaki only two hundred meters away from the Parliament and the PM headquarters. Police claims that the attack bears marks of the methodology of the Nuclei of Fire Conspiracy (NFC), a group that has recently announced its upgrading from night raids via bombing of a series of high-profile targets like the house of the ex-Chief of the General Staff and ex-Minister of Public, the house of the running chief of the Secret Services (EYP) and the Ministry of Macedonia and Thrace. The NFC have not made assassination attempts or made public use of guns in their operations, making them a distinct category from other urban guerrilla groups in operation in Athens.

According to the police, what the bourgeois press calls the Chalandri safe-house contained material that can be used to manufacture bombs "typical of the NFC". Most peculiarly, in the initial police briefing these consisted of a pressure cooker, clocks and flamable liquids, soon to be rendered "a ready-to-use time-bomb pressure-cooker explosive device and print material" in later police briefings. PCs are also being checked for electronic traces relating to criminal activity.

The police has arrested three people in relation to the Chalandri house: the son of the owner, the tenant, and one girl, all in their early 20s. It is unclear due to contradictory claims by the police and the press as whether all or some of the arrested were at the time in the premises.

Soon after the initial two arrests the police stormed a flat in the petty-bourgeois neighborhood of Galatsi, where two more people in their early 20s were apprehended after police allegedly found "3,500 well-hidden euros" (a crime against banking presumably), what seems to be a toy-gun and..."tools with which bomb connections can be constructed" (presumably pincers, screwdrivers and other satanic weapons). The police has arrested one of the two, while letting the second free.

None of the names of the arrested has been announced and they all pend examination by a judge within the first 48h of their arrests so that accusations can be formulated against them.