Stelios Papathemelis: ‘No secret’
Stelios Papathemelis, who has made a close study of the Polk affair, notes that while «there were notable political murders (George I, Polk, Lambrakis), that must not mislead us into parapsychological interpretations, such as that this city has some ‘secret’ that inspires political murderers and impels them to commit crimes. «Certainly the image of Thessaloniki as a city of political crimes was much intensified by the fact that the murder of the American journalist George Polk gained lasting news value. For the sixth decade since the crime was committed, books are being written about it in America and Greece, and films are being made as if it were a current event. In the US alone in the 1990s, we had books by Edmund Keeley, Kati Marton and Elias Vlanton. «Meanwhile, the heirs of Grigoris Staktopoulos are knocking on the door of the Supreme Court for the fourth time, requesting a re-examination of the trial of Staktopoulos, who was sentenced in a ‘show trial’ – in the phrase of [late prime minister] Panayiotis Kanellopoulos – allegedly as the moral instigator of the Polk murder. «It is not the city that ‘provoked’ the murders but a coincidence that it was chosen by their planners, whose victims happened to be in Thessaloniki. The three notable murders of Thessaloniki could have been carried out in Athens.»
