Greek police have arrested another alleged member of the November 17 organisation as part of an ongoing campaign to destroy the feared urban guerrilla group
Almost a year after the first ever arrest of a suspected member of November 17, the radical leftist group blamed for killing 23 Greeks and foreigners in 27 years, police said they had captured another, a 42-year-old civil engineer, outside his Athens home.
The group, which emerged in the turbulent post-dictatorship era of the mid-1970s, was seen as a major security threat to the 2004 Athens Olympics.
"Kostas Avramidis has been arrested and is accused of participating in the November 17 terrorist group", Greek police said in a statement.
A police source told Reuters Avramidis was arrested after his fingerprints matched those found on a book inside one of group's two weapons dens raided by police last year.
"His prints were found on this book detailing urban guerrilla warfare," the source said. "He was also mentioned in two of the other suspects' testimonies during their interrogation last year."
Avramidis is the 20th suspect to be captured. Police threw a dragnet over the group following a botched bomb blast at the port of Piraeus last June that led to the first capture of an alleged group member in more than a quarter of a century.
After a string of arrests last summer, the government declared victory over the band that has killed British, US and Turkish diplomats as well as prominent Greek businessmen and politicians.
The trial of 19 alleged guerrillas, most of whom deny any involvement with the group, started in March inside a high-security wing of Athens' Korydallos prison and is expected to last several more months.
The band, named after the date of a 1973 failed student uprising against the then ruling generals, first emerged with the assassination of CIA station chief Richard Welch in Athens.
Its most recent victim was British defence attache Stephen Saunders who was gunned down in June 2000.