Hopes of terror breakthrough
The police and their political superiors are confident that they are well on the way to making a breakthrough in their hunt for the domestic terrorists that have staged at least a dozen attacks since last December, despite two new incidents on Friday and Saturday. In an interview with Sunday’s Kathimerini, Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos expressed optimism about the course of investigations while police sources told the newspaper that one suspect in particular had been identified as a likely member of one of the terrorist groups that have recently been troubling authorities. Officials did not seem to be discouraged by an armed attack on police in central Athens late on Friday nor the explosion of a bomb outside the home of a former deputy minister in a southern suburb early on Saturday. Late on Friday, a man said to be wearing a surgical mask fired once at a riot police bus parked outside PASOK’s old headquarters on Harilaou Trikoupi Street without injuring anyone. The gunman then fired another shot in the air as police gave chase. The assailant ran off into Exarchia and evaded arrest. The bullets fired were said to be from a 9 mm caliber weapon. A few hours later, at 4.30 a.m., a small time bomb went off outside the Palaio Faliro home of former Deputy Interior Minister in charge of public order affairs Panayiotis Hinofotis. Nobody was injured in the attack, which caused minor damage. Despite the incident, police sources told Sunday’s Kathimerini that there is a positive mood in the force as a number of key pieces of evidence have been gathered recently which could help with the identification of at least one person suspected of being a member of one of the two most active terror groups: Revolutionary Struggle and Sect of Revolutionaries. This optimistic mood was also reflected in Pavlopoulos’s comments. «I think we are making good progress,» he said. «I do not want to say any more than that but the police are doing their job well in this area too.»
