Revolt charges to thwart prisoners’ leave, release plans
A total of 20 prison inmates, including November 17 hitman Dimitris Koufodinas, are to face charges of insurgence in connection with a protest in solidarity with a hunger-striking anarchist in February 2018, and could see their right to furlough or early release suspended under new legal provisions, Kathimerini understands.
The protest last year was carried out in Greek prisons to express support for Constantinos Giagtzoglou, who is being detained on charges of membership of the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire guerrilla group and over a letter bomb attack against former premier Lucas Papademos.
Giagtzoglou had started a hunger and thirst strike demanding his transfer from a jail in Larissa to Attica’s Korydallos Prison, where friends of his are inmates.
A statement issued by Koufodinas and three jailed anarchists had expressed solidarity with Giagtzoglou, as had other inmates in separate statements.
An investigation into the incident launched at the time by Supreme Court prosecutor Xeni Dimitriou is finished, Kathimerini understands, and judicial officials are expected to summon the inmates soon.
The leveling of the new charges against the convicts deprives them of the right to furlough and will freeze their efforts for early release under new legal provisions, Kathimerini understands.
In a seemingly related development, one of the 20 facing the new charges broke out of an agricultural jail in Tyrintha in the Peloponnese late Thursday.
Yiannis Michalidis, an alleged member of Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire, is known as the “Syntagma archer” for trying to shoot at police during an Athens rally in 2011 with a bow and arrow.
