NEWS

Suspects’ guns were not used in terrorist hits, say police

The firearms seized during police raids in Volos and Athens on Monday, when six people with alleged links to the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire urban guerrilla group were arrested, have not been used in terrorist activity.

Police said on Tuesday that the ballistics tests did not match evidence gathered from previous terrorist hits. However, tests are continuing in order to establish whether the weapons ? three AK-47 assault rifles, seven handguns and a revolver ? were used in any criminal activity.

Three suspected members of the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire who had been at large for more than a year were arrested on Monday along with three other suspects following raids on properties on Monday.

Police said Christos Tsakalos, Giorgos Nikolopoulos and Damiano Bolano were arrested following a raid on an apartment in the Nea Ionia area of Volos. The three had been wanted by police since October 2009.

Two other suspects, Olga Economidou and Giorgos Polydoras were also taken into custody in Volos.

Police believe both Economidou and Polydoras have played an active role in the organization, which claimed responsibility for a series of bloodless bomb attacks on public buildings and politicians as well as a letter bomb campaign that resulted in one person being slightly injured.

Officers from the police?s counterterrorism squad also raided a property in the northeastern Athens suburb of Holargos, where they arrested 25-year-old Constantinos Papadopoulos and his girlfriend, who was later released. Police believe that the Holargos apartment was where suspected members of the group stayed when they were in Athens.

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