Terrorist Group Says It Killed British Attache

The shadowy Greek terrorist group November 17 claimed responsibility Friday for the assassination of Britain’s defense attache in Athens, saying it targeted the diplomat because of his role in helping to coordinate NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia last year.

In a 13-page letter to the independent Athens newspaper Eleftherotypia, the group said Brig. Stephen Saunders was “one of those who participated in the Nazi-type raids and mass murder of innocent, unarmed civilians.”

Saunders’ widow, flanked by their two teenage daughters, issued a tearful defense of her slain husband. He “never raised his gun to kill anyone,” she said.

“I only hope the people that carried out this cowardly act on an unarmed man simply traveling on his way to work will realize the total devastation they have caused,” Heather Saunders said outside the family’s home in Athens.

A Defense Ministry spokesman in London said Friday that the group’s charge was unfounded and that Stephen Saunders was attached to the U.N. observer mission on Iraq when the Yugoslav bombing started.

Saunders was shot four times by two men on a motorcycle who pulled up beside his car as he was driving to the British Embassy on Thursday. He died at a hospital.

Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis promised to take the necessary steps to “eradicate the scourge of terrorism” against Western and Greek targets, while Foreign Minister George Papandreou vowed that the government would hunt down Saunders’ killers and cooperate with British authorities.

Scotland Yard anti-terrorism detectives arrived in Athens on Friday to help Greek investigators.

In a report last month, the U.S. government criticized Greece for its “laxity” in fighting terrorism. On Thursday, former CIA chief R. James Woolsey accused some Greek authorities of maintaining links to the November 17 group and turning a blind eye to its attacks.

“I believe there are some people in the Greek government who know certain members of the 17 November,” Woolsey said in an interview published in the Greek weekly magazine Pontiki. “Nothing has been done, this is an extremely important affair for the U.S., and it constitutes a continuous irritation and affects our relationship with Greece.”

Woolsey, the CIA chief from 1993 to 1995, said there have been 146 attacks against U.S. interests in Greece in the last 25 years, most of them attributed to the group.

He did not name the members of the Greek government who may be linked to the group. Anti-terrorism prosecutor Ioannis Diotis of Greece has asked Woolsey to elaborate on his claims.

November 17 describes itself as Marxist. Terrorism experts say it has recently become increasingly nationalistic in its orientation. It takes its name from a student revolt against the U.S.-backed military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. The protest was brutally put down Nov. 17, 1973, with dozens of students killed.

The group killed the CIA station chief in Athens, Richard Welch, in 1975. Since that first known slaying, the group is believed to have killed more than 20 Greeks and foreigners, including four other staff members at the U.S. Embassy, and bombed dozens of businesses. No one has been brought to trial for the attacks.

Greek police said ballistics tests on four spent cartridges found at the scene of the Saunders killing indicated that they came from the same .45-caliber pistol used in five previous killings.

Paul Wilkinson, a terrorism expert at St. Andrew’s University in Scotland, said Saunders’ slaying matches past attacks by November 17.

“From March to May last year, they were involved in attacks in Greece [in opposition to] NATO bombing and deployment and KFOR [peacekeeping troops] deployment in the Balkans,” he said. “I wasn’t at all surprised that they used that as a justification.”

He described the group as lacking in popular support. But while most Greeks would not approve of November 17’s tactics, its campaign against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization might find sympathy in this member state. There was widespread opposition to Greek participation in the campaign against Yugoslavia.

There also has been a strong undercurrent of anti-American sentiment in Greece because of U.S. support for the military junta that ruled the country.

Wilkinson said he believed that the Greek government’s failure to catch any November 17 members is more a matter of incompetence than conspiracy.

The Saunders killing is an embarrassment to the Greek government, which is to host the Olympics in 2004. While it is too late to relocate the Olympics, there is speculation in Greece and abroad that some countries might refuse to send their star athletes amid fears of attack.

“No government should encourage its citizens to attend while fanatics are free to murder with impunity,” the Times of London said in an editorial Friday.