Anarchists protest at PM’s door
Catching their police escorts off guard, some 150 anarchists on a motorcycle protest drove unhindered to Prime Minister Costas Simitis’s private residence in central Athens yesterday night, where they held an impromptu demonstration seeking the release of seven people held since the June 21 anti-EU riots in Thessaloniki. No arrests were made, although the section of Anagnostopoulou Street, in Kolonaki, where the PM lives, was closed off for an hour after the 8 p.m. protest. Earlier in the evening, the anarchists had driven from the Pedion tou Areos park to Korydallos Prison, where four of the five suspected rioters who are currently on a hunger strike are being held. After a brief pass by the Piraeus hospital where the fifth is being treated, they returned to the city center, tailed by motorcycle policemen. When the convoy turned off for Kolonaki, police failed to stop them. In June 2002, an armed drug addict who had earlier shot at two officers in Exarchia and disarmed a third fired several shots outside Simitis’s building. He was later caught in Koukaki.
