Police seek terror group links
Counterterrorism officers are investigating evidence gathered from suspected members of Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire for possible links with the more brutal urban guerrilla group Sect of Revolutionaries, sources told Sunday’s Kathimerini. A high-ranking Interior Ministry official, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that police operations are under way to look for any ties between the Sect of Revolutionaries and the four people arrested last week and another six still being sought. «There are indications that there are links between members of these two organizations,» the source said. «It is possible that if the evidence is used correctly, the investigation will lead to more suspects and other organizations.» The official revealed that police have been monitoring the movements of a group of 20 to 30 young people since July who they believed to be possible suspects in the murder of policeman Nektarios Savvas. Sect of Revolutionaries claimed the shooting. Some of those who were being watched were among the 10 people now being linked to the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire. Sources revealed that the house in the northeastern Athens suburb of Halandri – raided by police last week and where a device similar to that which exploded outside the home of PASOK MP Louka Katseli is said to have been found – had been under observation since June 2008 after its occupants were linked to an arson attack. Officers only moved in last week after a bag thrown into a dumpster outside the Halandri home was found to contain the remnants of components used to make an explosive device like the one that went off outside Katseli’s home. The four people arrested – Harilaos Hatzimichelakis, Emmanouil Yiospas, Myrto Panteloglou and Panayiotis Masouras – deny being members of any terrorist group. It was revealed that several of the 10 suspects knew each other, as they went to the same private schools in Athens’s affluent northern suburbs.
