November 29, 1952
PLOUMBIDIS: Communist Nikolaos Ploumbidis has not made a statement since his arrest and is not likely to make one. Angelos Evert, the police chief, who is supervising the interrogation (by the police director, I. Krontiris, under the direct supervision of T. Rakintzis, the general security chief), believes that Ploumbidis will not want to blacken his record as a Communist leader following his recent ousting by the Communist Party’s Central Committee and after its leader Nikos Zachariadis, in recent radio broadcasts from behind the Iron Curtain, called him a traitor and a security agent. Evert also believes that in order to preserve his reputation with the masses Ploumbidis will not make any statements and will not name any agents he knows of who are still at large. Ploumbidis broke down when informed of Zachariadis’s condemnation of him as an agent and informer for the General Security, but made no statement. (…) Interior Minister Pafsanias Lykourezos (…) said (…) that Ploumbidis had never been a police agent. IOANNIDIS: Last night’s broadcast by the radio station Free Greece included a report on the sessions of a meeting in mid-November of the Communist Party’s fourth Central Committee plenary meeting, when it was decided to oust Communist leader Yiannis Ioannidis. CELAL BAYAR: Athens had a second opportunity to experience yesterday’s sincere enthusiasm that greeted the leader of the Turkish Republic, during a reception at the Town Hall.
