‘It was the ideal setting’
Christos Zafeiris says that Thessaloniki is not the only place where political murders happened, but it was there that the most high-profile assassinations – the ones that rocked public opinion – were committed. As to why, he claims: «In the sick climate of the era, it was a vulnerable city, unprotected and insecure, with terrorist and parastate mechanisms and a distorted nationalist regime which the guardians from the great powers who were its political managers saw as a safeguard against foreign-instigated powers that might be active in the city. It was the ideal setting for political madness and social phobia, where all kinds of parastate operatives, spies, hired killers, covert and overt foreign agents and rabid nationalists could freely carry out their plans. Political passions, political instability and the parastate, fierce terrorism and insecurity, social fear and ruthless state control of political views – in general the nightmarish civil war climate – was the best setting and most suitable social atmosphere for the commission of political murders.»
