Photographers’ cameras hang from a railing inside the Korydallos Prison complex where the N17 trial continued yesterday with the testimony of Giorgos Petsos. Today, the first witnesses are expected to testify in connection with the 1989 killing of conservative MP Pavlos Bakoyiannis. His widow, Athens Mayor Dora Bakoyianni, is expected to attend.

Testifying at the November 17 trial yesterday, former Public Order Minister Giorgos Petsos, who was targeted by the extreme left-wing terrorist group 14 years ago, claimed the 19 defendants only represented a “small operational part of Greek terrorism.” Petsos, 56, who also held the transport portfolio and served as deputy defense, industry and finance minister under socialist PASOK governments in the 1980s, also maintained that Greece’s secret service, EYP, “appears to either contain, or to have contained, people who serve terrorism.”

Petsos was injured in a May 8, 1989 car bomb attack near his house in Filothei, northern Athens. He claims the attempted assassination was intended to silence him ahead of the corruption trial of PASOK founder and former PM Andreas Papandreou. Yesterday, Petsos told the court that he had looked forward to testifying at the N17 trial for 13 years. “But I am not as satisfied as I expected to be... The brains of [N17], the people who composed the proclamations... are missing.”