GREECE: Greece's trial of 19 suspected November 17 terrorists started in turmoil yesterday when the judge ordered the removal of a bullet-proof glass cage shielding the defendants because it breached their rights.
In a near-chaotic start to one of the most sensational trials in Greek history, dozens of lawyers, journalists and relatives of both victims and the accused had milled around the cage, making it almost impossible to hear the court proceedings.
November 17, a shadowy left-wing group, is blamed for 23 assassinations of Greeks and foreigners, including US, British and Turkish diplomats, over nearly three decades. They are also charged with dozens of bombings and bank robberies. The group took its name from the date of a bloody 1973 student uprising against the military dictatorship.
The group's first victim was Athens CIA station chief Mr Richard Welch in 1975 and the last was British defence attaché Mr Stephen Saunders, gunned down in June 2000.
Police finally swooped last year, ending one of the biggest security threats to the 2004 Athens Olympics and closing a chapter in the country's 1967-74 US-backed military rule.
The breakthrough came when the band's alleged youngest follower, Mr Savas Xiros (40), was caught after he was injured in a failed June bomb attack at the port of Piraeus, near Athens.
As the trial began yesterday, the prisoners, all dressed in casual clothes, smiled and continually waved at friends and relatives in the packed room in the women's section of central Athens's Korydallos prison, which has been turned into a makeshift courtroom. The trial is taking place in the same place where the generals who ruled Greece were tried after their overthrow.
The three-sided cage in which the defendants had first sat was open at the front, facing the judges who, instead of a jury, will decide their fate. Police in bullet-proof vests sat on chairs between the prisoners and the judges.
The noisy courtroom fell silent when Mr Dimitris Koufodinas, known as "Poison Hand", the group's alleged top hitman, shouted that he could not hear the proceedings and demanded the removal of the cage.
"Is it true that American experts came into this courtroom a few days ago to review it?" he asked Judge Michalis Margaritis, who is presiding over the three-member panel.
"I am not in a position to know that," the judge replied.
Defence lawyer Mr Yannis Rahiotis, who represents alleged leader Mr Alexandros Giotopoulos, also demanded the removal of the cage because it was an abuse of power.
"We are not trying this case during wartime," he said. "It is an insult to the defendants' personalities and purely theatrical special effects." After other appeals for the cage to be removed, including from prosecutors, Judge Margaritis ordered in mid-afternoon that it be dismantled.
Mr Giotopoulos, a 59-year-old mathematician educated in France during the years of student upheaval and a son of Greece's most famous Trotskyite, sat alone at the back of the cage. He did not talk to any of the other suspects, who included a woman, two beekeepers and three sons of a Greek Orthodox priest.
The Greek media are also up in arms over trial arrangements because live radio and television coverage has been banned in a bid to stop what the government says would be "television cannibalism".
A record 160 defence and prosecution lawyers alone are taking part, leading Judge Margaritis to appeal for calm. "We have never had a trial with so many lawyers, so please be patient," he said.
The defendants face life sentences if found guilty of the hundreds of charges against them. Greece does not have the death penalty and under a 20-year statute of limitations law the defendants will not be tried for attacks before 1982, including the killing of the CIA's Mr Welch.
Some defendants told newspapers on the eve of the trial they were not guilty and did not expect a fair hearing because Greece's socialist government wanted to make political capital out of the case in a possible election year.
Ms Heather Saunders, wife of Brig Saunders, sat stony-faced in the courtroom while the legal arguments went on. "I have just arrived. It's still early to comment," she said.