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DinoDoc
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AECCP loves Democracy
Sep 1999
time: 23:20
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quote:
The United States labored 10 years to bring about the recent trial in the Pan Am bombing case. US officials worked overtime to arrest the suspects now on trial in New York for bombing two US embassies in Africa in 1998. And serious efforts are under way to find the culprits in attacks on US targets in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
But there's a gap in this pattern. We should devote similar attention to the longest series of unsolved anti-American terrorist attacks in the world - those in Athens. This problem will assume critical urgency with the approach of the 2004 summer Olympics scheduled for Athens.
The first attack, a brutal murder, took place more than 25 years ago, and the left/nationalist group called "November 17" has remained active ever since. Under a banner of opposing liberal democracy, capitalism, and foreigners, the group has tried to kill more than a hundred Americans. Sadly, five US Embassy officials are dead.
The toll is so low only because for years the US has spent more taxpayer dollars for diplomatic security in Greece than anywhere else in the world, money badly needed to protect other posts.
In part because the US Embassy is a forbidding fortress, the terrorists have shifted their murderous attentions, killing British and Turkish diplomats and bombing the German and Dutch embassies. They have also killed or wounded prominent Greeks and attacked numerous businesses, many of them American.
By the grim standards of modern terrorism, November 17 is a modest threat. It should have been put out of business long ago. But it has recruited new, younger assassins and greatly expanded its range of weapons and explosives. Its success has encouraged copycat activities, with more than 100 bombings in Athens just last year by a plethora of groups.
The problem is Greek government passivity. Despite scores of attacks - many with eyewitnesses - there have been no arrests. No suspects have even been identified. Many Western countries have faced radical leftists, but only Greek law enforcement has zero accomplishments.
Few Greeks believe police failure is an accident. Repeatedly, key information about investigations is leaked to the tabloid newspapers. Last fall, six months of hard work by some of Scotland Yard's best investigators - sent to Greece after the murder of the British defense attaché in June - was exposed in two Athens dailies. The information could come only from inside the "elite" counterterrorist forces.
Time and again, witnesses who have given police "secret" testimony have received threatening phone calls or seen their cars firebombed by way of warning. Why should anyone help the police when they can expect their identity to be in terrorist hands in short order?
Washington bends over backwards not to antagonize friendly governments, but last year gave Greece failing grades in the security field three times. In May the State Department's annual report on global terrorism specified Colombia and Greece as the two most problematic countries.
In June, a bipartisan National Commission on Terrorism identified 146 anti-American terrorist attacks in Greece (all unsolved) over 25 years and recommended Greece and Pakistan be subject to legal sanctions for failure to cooperate. In December the Federal Aviation Administration gave Greece a failing grade in aviation security standards, not related to November 17 but symptomatic of the overall security problem.
Then, on Feb. 7 CIA Director George Tenet told a Senate committee of "a major vulnerability" of the 2004 Olympics scheduled for Athens, saying Greek authorities "need to take this terrorist threat far more seriously than it's been taken in the past."
During three years in the US Embassy in Athens, I learned the hard way why official cooperation with Greek security authorities has so far accomplished nothing. A top Greek law-enforcement official told me his agency intended to "wait out" the terrorists, hoping they would give up and retire. A political-level official of the Foreign Ministry bluntly told me Greece has nothing to fear from Washington because his ministry exercises more influence on Capitol Hill than does the State Department. Last year, a senior editor of the most respected daily paper in Athens dismissed November 17 as an American problem, not a Greek one.
The official approach is to belittle the problem abroad to protect the important tourism industry rather than enforce the law at home.
The Bush administration must treat anti-American attacks in Greece as no different from terrorism elsewhere. To start, it should tell Greek leaders it could not certify Athens as safe for American athletes and fans during the 2004 Olympics if November 17 is not destroyed.
The danger of the national humiliation that would follow an American boycott should convince Athens at last that terrorism requires action rather than rhetoric. Greek authorities can deal with this problem if they want to, and Washington should make certain they do.
• E. Wayne Merry, a former State Department and Pentagon official, is a senior associate at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington. |
Discuss. 
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DinoDoc
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AECCP loves Democracy
Sep 1999
time: 23:20
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quote:
The Washington Times, Tuesday, September 10, 1996
Greek Spy Agency Tied To Terror Group
By Bill Gertz
U.S. intelligence has uncovered evidence linking the Greek government to covert training for an international terrorist group that until recently operated on a Greek island, according to CIA sources.
The Greek government, through its National Intelligence Service, took steps last month to curb its backing for the anti- Turkish Kurdistan Worker's Party, a terrorist group known as the PKK, the sources disclosed to The Washington Times.
The PKK is a Marxist- Leninist group that since that early 1970s has sought to set up a separate Kurdish State in Southeastern Turkey, an area predominantly inhabited by ethnic Kurds.
The group also receives safe haven and aid from Syria, Iraq and Iran and has turned to urban terrorism in the past few years, according to the State Department .
It has been credited with scores of bomb attacks in Europe and Turkey since the early 1990s, making it among the most active international terrorist groups, the department's annual global terrorism report
stated.
The evidence of Greek complicity in sponsoring an international terrorist unit could lead to the unprecedented step of declaring a NATO ally a state sponsor of international terrorism, a policy that includes
harsh U.S. economic sanctions, terrorism experts said.
According to intelligence sources, the chief of Greece's National Intelligence Service met in Athens last month with two PKK terrorist leaders. The Greek Spy chief informed the PKK officials they could no longer conduct training operations in Greece and the two officials
agreed to relocate their training bases, sources said.
One of the PKK officials is an aide to PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. who is based in Syria. A second official is a member of the National Liberation Front of Kurdistan, based in Germany.
U.S. officials said Greek police and intelligence officials earlier this year took steps to shut down one PKK training camp on Euboea, a large island located northeast of Athens.
The camp, closed in February, was used for weapons and explosives training, officials said.
Greek authorities also raided a safe house near Athens in March that was used by PKK terrorists engaged in operations in Europe, the officials said.
However, U.S. officials said it is not clear that the Athens government has ended all support for the PKK, including the practice of allowing PKK terrorists to transit freely through Greece.
Theodossiss Demetracopouos, press secretary at the Greek Embassy, said in a statement, "The Greek government categorically denies that it has ever provided training or any other form of assistance to the PKK."
A State Department counterterrorism official had no comment on Greek support for the PKK, or whether Athens could be placed on the list of state sponsors of terrorism as a result.
Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism operations official, said the PKK is one of the most violent terrorist groups operating in the world today.
"The Greeks have taken the position that the enemy of my enemy is my friend," Mr. Cannistraro said. "The fact of the matter is you have one NATO ally supporting terrorist operations against another NATO member."
Mr. Cannistraro said the new government of Greece under Prime Minister Costas Simitis appears to be taking steps to curtail PKK activities.
In January, Mr. Simitis succeeded ailing socialist Andreas Papandreau, who died June 23.
The order to halt PKK training activities in Greece was given less than two months after Mr. Simitis took over as chairman of the ruling socialist Pan Hellenic Socialist Movement , known as Pastok, and consolidated his political power.
"There is no question that what the Greek government is doing with the PKK makes them supporters of international terrorism," Mr. Cannistraro said. "If political considerations were put aside, they would qualify as state sponsors of terrorism on the State Department's annual list."
The State Department terrorism report, issued in April, said Greece denied Turkish charges that the PKK conducted training in Greece denied Turksh charges that the PKK conducted training in Greece and received
aid from the Athens government. |
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Bereta_Eder
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No Ned there is not.
These are quite simply payed articles and men from Turkey and also rather uneducated "opinions" from people who simply dont know better. And they are old "news". I had already read both of them.
If you want to get a gist of 17N I recomend the book: 17 November: Europe's Last Red Terrorists.
Many news orginzations such as BBC and most if not all terrorism analysts have said it is the best book about 17N.
http://www.hurstpub.co.uk/2000/new2000/new6.html
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Bereta_Eder
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I have read both of them years ago. the first is in a prominent position in the turkish foreign ministry website.
there are simply not true and needless to say there is no proof for any of this exactly because they are not true.
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Bereta_Eder
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And needless to say that for 25 years Greece had that problem and for all this time Greece is a member of the EU, NATO and the Western European Union.
Turkey is a member of NATO only and well with too many serious human rights violations and too many deficienceis in its "democracy" to be taken seriously by anyone but guys like dino (and I hope he is trolling/joking otherwise he is really lost)
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panag
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MY WORDS ARE BACKED WITH BIO-CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Oct 2000
time: 07:20
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hi ,
as long as there is foreign military personel coming to Greece to get drunk , break in to churches , run after the woman , and do other things that they are not supposed to do , ..... there is going to be Greeks and others who shall resist , some by what ever means available , ......
the second thing is , some agencies , should start to get out of Greece , its there country , no more special ops on the Greek land , .....
the third , put a huge fence of some countries that neigbor Greece , .....
four , expand KIP and other's , ....
the fifth , check all these people who come only for a so-called holiday more often , .....
six , have a nice day
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Faeelin
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Tau Ceti
Oct 2001
time: 05:20
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quote:
Originally posted by MarkG
when someone who is considered to be an expert begins to write an article on US policy for US citizens being victims of terrorism in a country and ERRORS in the number of these citizens then why on earth should i give any notice to the rest? |
How big is the error?
That said, you seem to be just sticking your head in the sand.
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panag
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MY WORDS ARE BACKED WITH BIO-CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Oct 2000
time: 07:20
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quote:
Originally posted by MarkG
http://www.osedo.gr/murders.html
it in greek(it's the web site of the group of the families of greek victims by terrorism) but you can tell out the US names. the list is for both 17N and other groups victims |
hi ,
its complete , .....
MarkG ,  , possible to translate this page for the people who dont read Greek , .....
just so that they cant say ,yes but its in Greek , ....
, N17 is also suspected in several incidents , but they where never claimed by them , ....what about those numbers , .....
actually in all , there aint that much "Greek terrorism" , ....there is more outside terror coming in then you have from "local" groups , .....
and where do you draw the line on terrorism , ......
is murder and theft from some people who cross the border each day , and sneak back also terrorism , ...
when those people hit and steal from a monastery , near Ioannina , is that also terrorism , ....
have a nice night
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03-07-2002 22:36
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