Where Terrorists Run Free
MERRY, WAYNE
Where Terrorists Run Free WTenty-five years of attacks on Americans in . Greece have gone unpunished BY WAYNE MERRY WHEN TERRORISTS attack American embassies or kill our military personnel, the...
...The Greek terrorists call themselves November 17, to mark the crushing of a student uprising by a previous military government...
...As a result, the government treats the lives of non-Pasok prominent Greeks and foreign representatives as expendable...
...Over 30 more U.S...
...And why is there no anger from Washington...
...Wayne Merry, a former State Department and Pentagon official, is senior associate at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington...
...In scores of operations, the group has killed a prominent member of the Greek parliament and wounded others, tried to kill several Greek cabinet members and other senior officials, and murdered or mutilated leading diplomats, judges, industrialists, bankers, and physicians...
...His killers still walk free...
...It has brazenly bombarded the U.S...
...Our public representatives remain silent...
...The ruling Pasok party fears exposure of its own prior links with November 17 if the terrorists go on trial...
...The problem is political...
...The families and colleagues of our dead remember...
...There has never been a systematic police effort to find November 17, whom the Greek media often portray as urban Robin Hoods...
...It has now been 25 years since Richard Welch, a U.S...
...From their manifestoes, it is clear the terrorists believe their best days are still ahead...
...I worked on this issue for three years at the U.S...
...No suspect has been identified, and no serious investigation is even underway...
...Prime minister Costas Simitis is almost certainly not directly involved, but his party is unwilling to arrest old comrades from the fight against the military junta...
...Some American media do question staging the 2004 Olympic Games in a city that had over 100 political bombings last year, yet they tend to accept Greek inaction against terrorism as normal...
...Serious journalists who ask too many questions do so in peril of their lives...
...Recently, two major Greek newspapers printed full-page revelations of the evidence developed by a crack team of Scotland Yard investigators sent to Athens after the Saunders killing, information leaked from the Greek security services...
...How can this be...
...Witnesses of terrorist attacks, known only to the police, receive threats from the terrorists...
...The Americans who have survived November 17 attacks remember...
...Right...
...No terrorists have been arrested, however, let alone brought to justice...
...Most recently, just last June, it killed British defense attach Stephen Saunders...
...Many senators and congressmen publicly wrap themselves in the POW/MIA flag, but they do not demand justice for Americans killed in the line of duty in Athens...
...Welch was a CIA officer on a diplomatic assignment, declared as such to the local government...
...Associations of veterans and military personnel have lost interest, or perhaps hope...
...Since his death, three more Americans Navy Captain George Tsantes in 1983, Navy Captain William Nordeen in 1988, and Air Force Sergeant Ronald Stewart in 1991 have fallen prey to the same terrorist group...
...Not in Athens...
...officials have been wounded in attacks intended to kill...
...diplomat, was brutally gunned down in front of his wife, on his way home from a Christmas party in 1975...
...Where Terrorists Run Free WTenty-five years of attacks on Americans in . Greece have gone unpunished BY WAYNE MERRY WHEN TERRORISTS attack American embassies or kill our military personnel, the United States is relentless in bringing the criminals to justice...
...So where is the outrage in America...
...The chances the terrorists will be caught are very low, but the chances for more American victims are high...
...In this quarter-century reign of terror, the record of Greek law enforcement is zero: no convictions, no captures, no arrests, no suspects, nothing...
...Surely, if a U.S...
...Where is the outrage...
...The group uses firearms, high explosives, mortars, and rocket grenades (mostly stolen from the Greek police and military...
...embassy in Athens and am persuaded the problem goes far beyond police incompetence and a few terrorist sympathizers...
...embassy in central Athens and routinely bombs banks, businesses, and diplomatic targets...
...They have recruited a younger generation of killers, expanded their weaponry, tactics, and targets, and are supremely contemptuous of Greek law enforcement...
...Strangely enough, not if the crimes take place in Greece, our NATO ally...
...Of course, it proclaims a principled position against terrorismand promises the 2004 Summer Olympics will be absolutely safe (though it doesnt explain how...
...senator were murdered in downtown Washington by a political group that had also killed officials of a friendly country (say, Greece), the FBI and Justice Department would work round the clock to make arrests, under intense pressure from Congress and the media...
...President Clinton made a state visit to Athens in late 1999 but neglected even to raise the unpleasant topic of terrorism, giving Greek leaders precisely the message they wanted...
Vol. 6 • February 2001 • No. 21
