N17 suspects changing tune?
Three brothers, who are in Korydallos Prison pending trial and who have confessed to being members of the November 17 terrorist gang, will appeal to the investigating judge to hear supplementary testimony from them, their lawyer said yesterday. Savvas, Christodoulos and Vassilis Xeros want to clarify certain points regarding their actions and also to present the «true» involvement of other defendants in the case, lawyer Giorgos Aghiostratitis said after visiting them yesterday. This was seen as part of an ongoing effort that Savvas Xeros has begun to undermine the testimony with which police managed to crack November 17 after 27 years of failure. Yesterday, a council of appeal court judges ruled that Angeliki Sotiropoulou, the 17th suspect and only woman to be jailed, must provide material for DNA testing, as the 16 others have. It emerged also that in her testimony to investigating judge Leonidas Zervobeakos earlier this month, she acknowledged that her palm-print had been found on the inner frame of a sliding door in a hideout used by November 17. She said she had been taken there by her companion. «By chance, about one-and-a-half years ago, I went to an apartment with Dimitris Koufodinas. He told me that it belonged to a beekeeper customer of his who was away and had given him the key to leave some things there. It was an empty apartment in which I remained for a few minutes,» Sotiropoulou said. Today, a court is to hear Sotiropoulou’s petition to bar seven television channels and four specific journalists from referring to her personal life, her 12-year-old son and her past. The channels are Alter, Alpha, Antenna, ET-1, NET, Mega and Star and the journalists Nikos Kakaounakis, Fotini Pipili, Giorgos Trangas and Anna Panayiotarea. In another development, alleged gang leader Alexandros Yotopoulos, 58, received permission to study by correspondence at a French university. On the other hand, French pulp fiction writer Gerard de Villiers was refused permission by prison authorities to meet with any of the November 17 suspects.
