Suspects could provide terror link
The six people arrested over the weekend on terrorism charges could help police establish a suspected connection between Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire, the guerrilla group that claimed last month’s letter bomb campaign, and Sect of Revolutionaries, the most lethal militant organization currently active in Greece, police sources have told Kathimerini. A preliminary police investigation indicates that the six suspects, including two young men believed to be members of Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire, are part of a sophisticated operation. «The weaponry and the suspects’ movements suggest a more high-level organization than that of the Conspiracy group,» one source said. He said that the suspects used countersurveillance tactics and traveled on intercity buses when transferring weapons between hideouts in different cities to avoid detection. Another source at the Citizens’ Protection Ministry was more explicit about a suspected link between the two groups. «The toughest members of Conspiracy were in contact with Sect of Revolutionaries and participated in their activities,» he said. Ballistics tests on weaponry seized from suspected hideouts over the weekend had not provided a match to arms used in any previous terrorist attacks by Sect of Revolutionaries or any other groups by late last night. In view of this, officers of the police’s counterterrorism unit have shifted their focus to locating the Sect’s chief hideout. Another police source told Kathimerini yesterday that some of the weapons confiscated over the weekend may have been modified in private workshops to stop them being linked to previous terrorist attacks. In comments published in Ta Nea yesterday, Citizens’ Protection Minister Christos Papoutsis said that the arrests had stopped «a vicious cycle of bloodshed.» «It was a large-scale and successful, bloodless operation that produced very significant evidence and suspects,» Papoutsis said.
