No one knows when Europe's most unwanted man first arrived in Greece. Some say it was January 29th, others February 2nd, that a Lear jet, bearing Abdullah Ocalan, touched down on Greek soil. After that there was no way back for the burly, moustachioed Kurdish rebel leader.

The man no European country wanted to know, let alone grant political asylum to, had unwittingly begun his return journey home - to Turkey. Before long Turkish special agents would be taking him back to the country he had fled in 1980, the country that had so relentlessly hunted him across the globe ever since.

Today Mr Ocalan, who is also known as Apo (or uncle to his supporters) sits in a whitewashed prison on a deserted island off Istanbul in the Sea of Marmara.

Holed up in isolation, he sits alone, his famously fiery gaze concentrated only on the interrogators who began filing into the prison yesterday. The jail has no other inmates. They have all been evacuated to make room for the 49-year-old Mr Ocalan who, quite soon, will face trial (by the State Security Court, which includes a military judge and two civilians) on charges of leading a 15-year guerilla campaign in Turkey's southeast - an armed struggle that his critics say was aimed at creating a Greater Kurdistan, an armed struggle in which an estimated 30,000 people are thought to have died.

The Turks have found their exhilaration at the capture of "the terrorist" hard to hide. In sharp contrast to the rest of the world, Apo "the baby killer" has long been their most wanted man.

This week, Ankara's jubilant Prime Minister, Bulent Ecevit, said he expected the hearing to focus on a few specific massacres that Ocalan is believed to have masterminded as head of his Marxist-oriented Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Under Turkish law, the Kurdish leader will be tried for treason. If found guilty he could be executed, handed 22,000 life sentences or imprisoned for 20 years. "But," said Mr Ecevit, "it will be very free, a very just trial, because justice is very free in Turkey." The fact that foreign observers - including Apo's lawyers - would not be allowed to attend, was he added, neither here nor there. "They want, more or less, to inspect the Turkish justice system, but they have no rights to have any doubts about it," the Prime Minister intoned.

The Kurds are a resilient mountain people who, denied a homeland, have suffered perhaps more than any other ancient nation in the Middle East. With around 25 million of them scattered over four countries, they now hold the unenviable position of being the largest ethnic group to have never had a state of their own.

But this week that resilience turned to anger as hundreds of thousands of Kurds vented their spleen over Apo's arrest. Across Europe, protests rocked governments and convulsed capitals as Kurds stormed the diplomatic missions of those they blamed for their leader's arrest: Greece, Kenya and Israel.

In demonstrations throughout Europe, men, women and children went on the march: in Athens, the Hague and Berlin some even set fire to themselves chanting Apo's name as the flames engulfed their bodies.

"The Kurdish people are desperate, they have lost their leader," said Mr Yasser Kaya, the president of the Kurds' parliament-in-exile. "They are united in anger. I really don't know if the situation can now be controlled," he lamented during a lightning visit to Athens.

It is believed there are currently 850,000 Kurds living in Europe. The vast majority have settled in Germany, Scandinavia, Italy and Greece. For those fleeing political persecution and factional warfare back home, Greece is now seen as the easiest backdoor into the west.

While most are Iraqi Kurds, who have never had much time for Ocalan, the PKK or the leader's dogmatic methods, their protests this week were violent proof that Apo's arrest has brought them together as never before.

"To call him a terrorist is an insult to our people," said Ali Shapol, an Iraqi Kurd forced to live rough on the streets of Athens since sneaking into Greece. "We agree with our Turkish comrades that the Greek government played a very dirty game with Apo. They gave him to Turkey," he added, echoing the PKK's anger at Athens's role in "the handing over of our president".

Few countries in Europe have as much to lose over the Ocalan affair as Greece. Already Athens has been hard hit by the imbroglio despite vehement denials of any complicity in his capture.

Within 72 hours of the news breaking that the Greek government had indeed harboured the world's most unwanted man in its embassy in Kenya - and allowed him, in the process, to be snatched by the country's biggest regional rival - Prime Minister Costas Simitis found himself in the eye of an unprecedented storm.

Amid calls for his own resignation, the embattled premier was forced on Thursday to sack three of his closest cabinet colleagues, including Foreign Minister Theodore Pangalos. Many accused Mr Simitis of bringing humiliation to the country by bungling the operation to hide Ocalan - a man seen as a folk hero by Greeks who have not forgotten their ancestors' own desperate fight against the Ottoman Turks.

As they survey the political wreckage, Greeks have begun to worry about the wrath they have incurred in Kurds and Turks alike. That worry turned to visible angst on Wednesday when police ordered draconian security measures to be taken at all public buildings and foreign embassies.

"What we have is a worst case scenario," sighed Dora Bakoyanni, a prominent conservative opposition MP. "We've upset our European Union partners for failing to inform them about Ocalan's movements. We've angered the Turks who see we were trying to hide him and we've enraged the Kurds, a people who had always seen us as their friends because they now think it was us who handed him over to the enemy."

Ocalan had been on the run for almost six months since being forced, under threat of military action by Turkey, to leave Syria - his base for almost 18 years. The fugitive leader's frantic search for a safe haven followed a brief stay in Russia and two months in Italy.

With no other country to turn to - and fast running out of fuel - his Lear jet touched down in Greece at the behest of a group of nationalist socialist MPs. Smuggling him into the country with the help of a retired naval officer, the deputies promised to set about persuading the Greek government to grant him political asylum on the principle that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

In the event the leader's clandestine entry triggered a cloak-and-dagger farce. On hearing of Ocalan's arrival, aides say Mr Simitis almost fainted. "Turkey had said in no uncertain terms that harbouring its most wanted man would mean war," said Serafeim Findanides, the editor of the mass-selling daily Eleftheroptypia. "Simitis knows that just one day of war with Turkey would cause irrevocable harm to Greece's bid to join the European Union's single currency, his major goal. He immediately demanded that Ocalan leave the country."

Sources close to the Greek Secret Service (EYP) say the Athens government decided to despatch Ocalan to Greece's diplomatic compound in Nairobi after coming under intense pressure from Washington.

Since the early 1980s, the US State Department has frequently described Athens as housing some of the most dangerous home-grown terrorist groups in Europe.

Upon being leaked the news, local intelligence officers say, the CIA immediately seized the chance as a golden opportunity for Greece to prove it was no longer soft on terrorism. European Union diplomats insist Washington also saw Ocalan as a perfect trade-off for Turkey's willingness to provide NATO allies with military airbases that have been used to stage bombing raids against Iraq.

"The whole thing was plotted by America, Turkey, Kenya and Greece. We were the middle men," said Col Savvas Kalenterides who was dispatched to Nairobi to take charge. "As a Greek I feel deeply ashamed about our role which is why I have decided to talk."

Athens's outgoing foreign minister admitted he persuaded Ocalan to go to Kenya with the promise that Greece would help find him a safe haven elsewhere in Africa. When the rebel leader had been at the compound for 12 days and the negotiations were still not completed, US officials reportedly began to lose their temper.

The details of Ocalan's capture in a convoy on the way to Nairobi's airport are still shrouded in mystery. No one is sure whether it was conducted by the CIA, the Israeli secret service, Mossad, Turkish intelligence or the Kenyan authorities.

What is sure, however, is that by noon last Monday Mr Pangalos had received a call from Washington with very clear instructions. He was told that time had run out for the world's most unwanted man.

"That's when he panicked and called Ocalan personally," said Mr Findanides, the newspaper editor. "He said the compound was about to be stormed by Kenyan forces and that if he left immediately he could fly to Holland. The rest as they say is history."

For Greece it could be the sort of history that, in the coming months, will spell serious trouble for its already vexed relationship with Turkey.