Defendant denies N17 infiltration
No foreign agents ever managed to infiltrate November 17, the terrorist group’s alleged chief executioner insisted yesterday following a report in Kathimerini that an East German spy had worked his way into the left-wing organization during the 1980s. Speaking to journalists during a break in the ongoing trial of 19 N17 defendants – which started on March 3 – Dimitris Koufodinas dismissed the report as «a scenario… within the framework of a savage war between clashing business interests.» «It has been proved that November 17 had no link with secret services,» the 45-year-old beekeeper said. Earlier, prosecutor Christos Lambrou had seized on the report to mock the defendants, saying N17 had been a «coffee shop,» a derogatory remark used in Greek to describe an amateurish setup. Koufodinas retorted that the group had been «a coffee shop that for 27 years humiliated the secret services.» Undeterred, Lambrou compared the group to a particularly hole-ridden type of cheese. Established in 1975, N17 killed 23 people before apparently being broken last year.
