Peynaud: Yotopoulos framed
In her second day of testimony, Marie-Therese Peynaud, the companion of Alexandros Yotopoulos, the alleged mastermind of the November 17 terrorist group, said yesterday the charges against him were fabricated because of his late father’s reputation as a leftist and former associate of Trotsky. Peynaud said it was only by chance that she herself was not on trial. «I have the good ‘fortune’ to be French and to be ill. Otherwise I would be (on trial) too. They have as much evidence against me as against (Yotopoulos),» she told the court yesterday. Peynaud (who is reported to have cancer) said that during her questioning after Yotopoulos’s arrest last summer by public prosecutor Yiannis Diotis, he had told her he believed that she was the woman who had participated in the first assassination by November 17 of CIA Athens bureau chief Richard Welch in 1975. Peynaud said Diotis had told her to cooperate so as to help herself and her companion. Meanwhile, the court has asked self-confessed operative Dimitris Koufodinas to be ready to testify on Tuesday.
