In ways large and small, the U.S.-led global war on terrorism is paying unanticipated dividends. Witness, for example, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s sudden eagerness to differentiate himself from spider-hole-dweller Saddam Hussein by cheerfully promising to abandon his nuclear ambitions.
So too, it’s logical to infer, with last month’s less publicized conviction in Greece of 15 members of November 17, a notorious terror group but one that for years has been in hiding and rarely in the news. Like its European counterparts, Italy’s Red Brigades and Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang, November 17 earned a global cachet among leftists nearly three decades ago for its anti-imperialist posturing and its adeptness at spilling blood. November 17 was named for the date in 1973 when the U.S.-backed military junta that then ruled Greece viciously crushed a student uprising. Over more than a quarter century, the group was responsible for killings, bombings and other forms of guerilla warfare–all of it swathed in a peculiar ideological blanket woven of Marxism and Greek nationalism.
The first of the 23 murders claimed by November 17 was the 1975 assassination of an American, CIA station chief Richard Welch, shot to death as he and his wife walked home from a party. The group’s victims included three other U.S. officials, a British defense attache and two Turkish diplomats, plus several Greek politicians and industrialists. The group also bombed buses loaded with American servicemen, injuring many but killing none. In one especially bold assault, members of November 17 launched a rocket attack against the home of Germany’s ambassador to Greece.
As the list of killings and other outrages lengthened, the U.S. and some other European governments complained about the Greek government’s abject failure to bring November 17 to justice. The likely reason for that failure: Greece’s modern political class includes many former leftists whose youthful political arousal included starry-eyed infatuation with November 17.
That background becomes suddenly salient in 2004 as Greece prepares to host the Summer Olympics in August. Whether the desire to mop up its November 17 mess was motivated by embarrassment over its tolerance for terror or by fear that the group would disrupt the games, the Greek government began to crack down in the second half of 2002. On June 29 of that year, the premature explosion of a terror bomb at the Greek port of Pireaus injured a November 17 member named Savas Xiros. His arrest led police to hideouts stuffed with weapons and documents. Xiros also helped police by divulging the clandestine group’s secrets.
Within weeks, a core group of November 17 terrorists was in custody. Until the police arrived, they led outwardly unremarkable lives; one was a beekeeper, one painted religious icons, one was a guitarist in a rock band, two sold real estate. Fifteen members of the group were convicted (and four others acquitted) last month. Their nine-month trial in Athens took place before a three-judge tribunal instead of a jury–the better to prevent an atmosphere of intimidation. Before the trial, a message purportedly from November 17 had threatened to seize hostages if the defendants weren’t set free.
The court has since handed down a total of 55 life sentences to six ringleaders of November 17; eight other members got jail terms of from eight to 25 years, while one member who cooperated with authorities received a suspended sentence. November 17 leader Alexandros Yiotopoulos alone received 21 life sentences for instigating the group’s spate of murders.
Relatives of November 17’s victims have reacted with cautious satisfaction to the lengthy sentences–although the absence of a death penalty in Greece keeps alive the fear that the terrorists eventually will escape or be released. U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher sounded a similarly tentative tone, saying that, “We hope and expect the sentences will be fully carried out.”
But the greatest relief caused by the convictions belongs to the Greek government, which desperately hopes to keep terrorists at bay when the Olympic extravaganza returns to its ancestral home. According to the Associated Press, government spokesman Christos Protopapas said after the sentencing that November 17 “now belongs to a past which tormented Greek society.” The 15 convicts intend to appeal to a higher court, but those appeals probably won’t be heard until after the Olympics. Security precautions for the games will be extravagant–but not quite as frantic as they might have been if the leaders of November 17 still walked the streets.
What are we to take away from this episode?
That we dwell in a new world in which even local terrorist folk heroes such as the serial murderers of November 17 are becoming expendable to the nations where they lurk. As the Olympics neared and word spread that the U.S. might not send athletes to Athens, the government of Greece finally got serious about beheading November 17. That’s a message that surely won’t be lost on other international fugitives of the terror persuasion.
No war on terrorism will ever eliminate that blood-red scourge. But in the wake of Afghanistan and Iraq, where the U.S. displayed some of its resolve, playing host to deadly extremists evidently is less fashionable than it was. Ask Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi.
Or ask Alexandros Yiotopoulos, who’ll have plenty of time to mull that question as he serves the first of his 21 life sentences in a Greek prison.
