NEWS

Hair provides link to terror group suspect

Police in the country’s counterterrorism force claim to have identified one of the members of terrorist group Revolutionary Struggle following fresh tests on DNA evidence taken from the sites of the group’s attacks over the past two years. According to a report in Sunday’s Vima newspaper, a hair found in a ski mask left at one of the sites is believed to belong to an active member of the terrorist group. He is thought to be one of the two assailants involved in an attack on a special guard outside the Glyfada home of Romilos Kedikoglou in April 2007, when the latter had been Supreme Court president. After taking a submachine gun from the special guard, one of the assailants left behind the ski mask while fleeing the scene. Although the terror group never accepted responsibility for the April 2007 attack, the similarity of the weapons used in subsequent attacks led police to make the connection. The breakthrough was achieved after Alternate Interior Minister Christos Markoyiannakis asked police forensic experts to re-examine and cross-check all evidence taken from the scene of attacks linked to Revolutionary Struggle. This year alone the group has claimed responsibility for a large explosion outside a Citibank branch in Filothei, northern Athens, in March and a powerful car bomb placed out outside the headquarters of Citibank in Kifissia in February, which however failed to detonate. The group, believed to have strong links with certain far-left and anarchist groups, is thought to be behind many more attacks that have not been claimed. Last year the group claimed an attack on a riot police bus in the Athens district of Goudi in December and on the Athens headquarters of oil company Shell in October. Both these attacks were mentioned in the US State Department’s terrorism report for 2008.

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