NEWS

Former rebel supports peace

As September 15 elections in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia approach amid fears of renewed ethnic violence, tensions eased slightly early on Saturday when ethnic Albanian gunmen released five Slav Macedonians they had abducted three days earlier. But a spokesman for the kidnappers, a splinter group opposed to the August 2001 peace deal that ended a six-month guerrilla campaign, warned that more such actions would take place unless the government released three Albanians arrested last week for allegedly killing two police officers. Ali Ahmeti, the leader of the ethnic Albanian insurgents who accepted the peace deal and is now running an election campaign, told Kathimerini’s Stavros Tzimas that the policemen’s murders «was the work of criminals and was aimed at poisoning the pre-election period.» Ahmeti spoke early last week, before the kidnappings claimed by the Albanian National Army. He stressed his support for the Ohrid accords which ended the violence. Regarding terrorism in Greece from 1982 to 1989, the Stasi files name 31 Greeks and about 20 foreigners. The Stasi kept detailed files on all the Greek groups and the attacks that they claimed responsibility for with proclamations or which were believed to have been carried out by them. It appears that the Stasi have identified all the members of, at least, ELA, probably through the group’s contacts with the international terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal. These notes include biographical details, among which are at least three families involved with ELA.

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