NEWS

In Brief

Domestic terrorism

Trial of Conspiracy of Cells of Fire suspects set for January 17 An Athens court yesterday said that the trial of 13 suspected members of the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire guerrilla group would start on January 17 but did not determine a venue. Sources said it was likely that the trial of the guerrilla group suspects would be held in the small town of Amfissa, central Greece, where the two policemen charged with the murder of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos were tried. In a related development, two suspects being questioned in connection with another militant group, Revolutionary Struggle, were granted conditional release after testifying before an appeals court magistrate. The two suspects are the wife and best man of Costas Gournas, who has confessed to playing a leading role in the group’s activities along with suspected ringleader Nikos Maziotis and the latter’s girlfriend, Panayiota Roupa. Crossing collision Woman hurt as train hits bus A young woman was in the hospital with serious injuries yesterday after being hit by a bus that had collided with a train on a level crossing near the village of Neohori near Xanthi in northern Greece. According to witnesses, the bus had been waiting at the level crossing when a female pedestrian raised the bar so that it could cross the railway tracks. As the bus started crossing the tracks, the train, which had been en route to Xanthi from Thessaloniki, appeared and crashed into it. The bus overturned and hit the woman. The driver of the bus and the two passengers on board were unharmed, as was the train driver. Unwilling passengers A group of 10 aid workers on a ship that had been bound for the Gaza Strip are being taken to Greece against their will after a dispute with the captain, Reuters quoted the Road to Hope charity group as saying yesterday. The groups said the Greek ship Strofades IV left the Libyan port of Derna early yesterday, taking 10 aid workers – seven Britons, two Irish people and an Algerian – to Greece. Migrants intercepted Police yesterday detained 143 illegal immigrants, mostly Afghans, and their six suspected smugglers – five Iraqis and a Greek – after stopping and searching several trucks on the Athens-Patra national road near Corinth late on Wednesday. Murder solved Police said yesterday that a 28-year-old Polish woman and two male compatriots, aged 27 and 31, have been arrested by their counterparts in Poland in connection with the murder last month on Myconos of 73-year-old Dimitris Zouganelis, the brother of a well-known businessman who owns properties on the island. According to police, the Polish woman, who had worked as a cleaner for the victim, had plotted the murder along with her two compatriots before fleeing to their homeland with the contents of Zouganelis’s safe. Last Straw Foreign Ministry spokesman Grigoris Delavekouras yesterday condemned as «unacceptable» a proposal by Britain’s former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, according to which a formal partition of Cyprus should be considered if reunification talks between Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots fail. »We won’t let Mr Straw put a knife to our neck,» said Delavekouras.

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