Toppled From Their Pedestal

When a military dictatorship ruled Greece three decades ago, secret police informers were everywhere. So ever since that hated junta fell, snitching has been more despised here than in most societies.

Small wonder, then, that members of the once-romanticized November 17 terrorist organization have fallen from their dubious pedestal since their recent arrests. The men’s involvement in terrorist acts isn’t the main issue--it’s their collective case of what one defense attorney called “verbal diarrhea.”

In fact, members of the terrorist gang seem almost to be competing with one another to show who can cooperate most fully with authorities.

The notorious November 17, blamed for 23 killings and many robberies over the last quarter-century, was often portrayed as an almost invincible band of ideologically hardened Marxist revolutionaries. For many Greeks, the most stunning revelation of the confessions is how the men have come across as intellectually unsophisticated working stiffs who were simply doing their jobs--sometimes without even knowing whom they would be killing.

A simplistic anti-imperialist and anti-American ideology appears to have played a role in drawing most of them into the group. But their confessions give the impression that they stayed for more basic reasons: a lust for thrills and the feeling of self-importance, ties of kinship and friendship, the income from bank robberies and the fear that they would be killed if they tried to get out.

Named after the date in 1973 when the junta crushed a student uprising, November 17 burst into prominence with its first slaying, that of CIA Athens station chief Richard Welch in 1975.

During the group’s early years, a significant portion of the Greek public--angered by U.S. support for the 1967-74 dictatorship--appeared sympathetic to its ideology if not its methods.

But in the mid-1980s, when the group targeted prominent Greek businessmen, public opinion began to swing more solidly against it. In the last two years, with the Greek government under pressure to prove capable of running a safe Olympics in 2004, investigative work aimed at the group was stepped up. Police also accepted help from Scotland Yard and the FBI.

A Fortuitous Capture

Then, in late June, suspected November 17 member Savas Xiros, 40, was injured allegedly when a bomb he was carrying went off prematurely. His capture led police to safe houses and the arrest of more than a dozen other suspects.

Alexandros Giotopoulos, 58, the accused leader of the group, said in court that his co-defendants’ confessions were lies designed to frame him and win themselves lighter punishment. Under a new anti-terrorism law, confessions can win the men leniency. And because Greece has no death penalty, they needn’t fear execution even if they confess to multiple murders.

But few others question that the suspects’ stories contain much that is true--whatever else may be missing or distorted.

Police say that Christodoulos Xiros, 44, one of those who has talked the most, has confessed to involvement in nine murders, five murder attempts, 11 bomb and rocket attacks and a string of bank robberies over nearly 20 years.

In a statement leaked to the press, he coldly described the June 28, 1988, assassination of a U.S. Embassy defense attache, Navy Capt. William Nordeen.

Explosives were packed into a car along a route often taken by “an American official,” with a triggering device placed in a nearby empty house, Xiros said.

“When the target passed in his car, I pressed the button on the remote control,” he said. “Only on the news after the act did we learn that the target was killed and that it was U.S. Capt. Nordeen.”

Dora Bakoyannis, the widow of Pavlos Bakoyannis, a conservative member of Parliament killed by the gang in 1989, said in a recent interview that “terrorism is so difficult to deal with because they’re killing people without knowing them, without any feelings against them.”

“It’s a very difficult time for the families of the victims, for many reasons,” said Bakoyannis, an opposition member of Parliament and candidate for mayor of Athens in elections scheduled for this year. “They see the whole scene every day on television, again and again. And they are looking at persons, trying to understand how and why these persons killed our loved ones.”

Police are trying to determine whether a letter claiming to be from November 17 that was published last Wednesday is genuine or not.

Eleftherotypia, a leading Greek daily, reported that it had seen the letter, which bore November 17’s trademark red star and threatened kidnappings as a response to the arrests.

Based on what is known so far of November 17, the group looks more like a mutation of a traditional Greek small business, built on ties of family and friendship, than an ideologically committed revolutionary band--the image it cultivated in statements distributed after its killings. Three of those arrested are brothers, several others are more distantly related, and most of the rest were their close friends.

“From their testimony, it appears that November 17’s members were like people who find a job in a company and do what is asked of them, without having any great responsibility for its strategy, budget, corporate image and bottom line,” commentator Nikos Konstandaras wrote in Kathimerini, a leading Greek daily.

Giotopoulos, the alleged leader, can be viewed as the CEO of a small firm making decisions with a few other board members, Konstandaras said.

Giotopoulos is the son of a prominent Greek follower of the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky who reportedly switched sides to support Greece’s right-wing government after World War II. When he learned how his father was loathed by his former comrades, Giotopoulos apparently became determined not to repeat the elder man’s abandonment of the leftist cause.

‘Obviously Not Content’

“The members of the board were obviously not content with running a lucrative business, using their personnel and know-how to rob banks and armored trucks,” Konstandaras wrote, “ ... but had delusions of grandeur as well, using the blood of their victims as a peg for their dilettante leader’s incoherent ‘anti-imperialist’ rambling.”

In a statement to police, Vassilis Xiros, 30, one of three brothers in the gang, described the May 28, 1997, slaying of Greek shipowner Constantinos Peratikos--and how a stupid mistake nearly led to the killers’ capture.

“During one meeting, ‘Loukas’ and my brother [Savas Xiros] told me that our next plan was to kill the shipowner Peratikos,” he said in his statement, using the code name of a man who has been identified as fugitive Dimitris Koufodinas. “The reason, they told me, was that he had laid off many employees without any regard for the families that would be made penniless.”

On the day of the slaying, a fourth man, code-named “Takis,” drove the three to a place where they expected Peratikos to come by, Vassilis Xiros said. Then the driver got out and left, and “Loukas” and Savas Xiros watched for their prey, he said.

“When they saw Peratikos approach, they got out and walked toward him,” Vassilis Xiros said. “I sat in the driver’s seat, as I had been told to do. While sitting there, I heard gunfire.... Immediately after the shooting, ‘Loukas’ and Savas returned to the van. I tried to start the van, but it was impossible. ‘Takis’ had left something on, and the car battery had given out.”

They had to hoof it. When someone, probably a policeman, opened fire on them, they raced down the road and commandeered a taxi.

“I fired two shots into the air to frighten the crowd that was beginning to gather and to make sure nobody would follow us,” he said.

They drove to an alley, switched vehicles and soon abandoned the second car, he said. They had escaped.

Vassilis Tzortzatos, 48, projected enormous nonchalance in his description of how he came to participate in the Feb. 21, 1985, killing of newspaper publisher Nikos Momferratos.

“I met Christodoulos Xiros through a friend of mine,” Tzortzatos said in his statement to police. “We started hanging out together, and after a while, early in 1985, he asked if I would be interested in doing something with him. I asked him what exactly we would be doing. He said something about bombs and that kind of stuff. I asked if we would be the ones doing this--we, the inept? And that was the end of the conversation.

“But Christodoulos, a few days later, told me straight out that I should join the November 17 organization. I agreed and joined.”

Tzortzatos soon took part in discussions “about economic targets and American political targets which we would have to take some action against in the future,” he said.

“These meetings were repeated many times until one day we decided to kill Momferratos, the publisher of the newspaper Apogevmatini.... We had decided to murder Momferratos for his yellow journalism and his representation of the upper class.”

Tzortzatos said his role in the assassination was to watch for Momferratos to pass by in his car.

“When Momferratos’ car passed by and I was sure he was in it, I raised my hand, and a little while later I heard gunshots,” he said. “After the gunshots, I left and went home.”

Tzortzatos said he learned on television that Momferratos had been killed. He met the next day in a city park with two of his partners in the crime and discussed the killing, he said. “We were all satisfied with the outcome.”

Over the last two years, the publisher’s son, George Momferratos, has helped organize a group of victims’ relatives who have spoken out in an effort to turn public opinion more solidly against the group.

There had been a degree of sympathy for November 17 because “you have all these left activists who went through a lot of problems in the past,” he said, so “the reflex toward terrorism was, ‘Don’t touch the terrorists, they’re fighters for human rights.’ Very stupid.

“Now things are changing,” he said, adding that he believes “there are still strong elements of quasi-support” for November 17 within the Greek public.

“We don’t think Greece has confronted this issue,” he said, “and it has to be confronted.”

Times librarian John Jackson contributed to this report.