ELA report implicates 5, clears 5
While recommending that all five people arrested and charged with membership of the Revolutionary Popular Struggle (ELA) terrorist group should stand trial, a senior prosecutor has also called for no action to be taken against another five suspects, three of whom are currently being tried for alleged participation in the November 17 group. Prosecutor Antonis Mytis’s report to the Council of Appeals Court Judges was submitted on Friday, but the full details of the 350-page document were only made public yesterday. The council is to decide on Mytis’s recommendations within the next few days. The report called for architect Christos Tsigaridas, 64; former Kimolos Mayor Angeletos Kanas, 52; civil engineer Costas Agapiou, 56; tourist agency employee Irini Athanassaki, 48, and civil servant Michalis Kassimis, 58, to be tried for all the attacks carried out by ELA and its sister group, May 1, up to 1995. These include the 1994 killing of senior police officer Apostolos Vellios, the 1989 assassination of Supreme Court prosecutor Anastassios Vernardos, 17 attempted murders and 59 bomb attacks. The report noted that ELA was created in the summer of 1974 and had set up several autonomous smaller groups including Popular Struggle, Red Initiative, October 80, Christos Kassimis Revolutionary Group, Autonomous Cells and May 1. But Mytis made no reference to ELA’s alleged links with international terrorism. The prosecutor also recommended that charges be dropped against N17 suspects Yiannis Serifis, Constantinos Telios and Angeliki Sotiropoulou, who had been implicated by witnesses in ELA attacks, as well as Kanas’s estranged first wife, Sofia Kyriakidou – the prosecution’s chief witness – and Epaminondas Skyftoulis, a N17 defense witness.
