Attacks spike in ‘solidarity’ with terror suspect

The office of a university professor at Panteion University in Athens was vandalized by members of an anti-establishment group yesterday afternoon, the latest in a series of attacks described by the perpetrators as “an expression of solidarity” with Constantinos Giagtzoglou, a 29-year-old terrorist suspect who was recently transferred from the capital’s Korydallos Prison to a penitentiary in Larissa, central Greece. The suspect is demanding his return to Korydallos.

Earlier in the day, some 30 to 40 anti-establishment group members staged a sitin protest at the offices of the governmentaffiliated Avgi newspaper in support of Giagtzoglou, while shortly after Tuesday midnight a similar number went on a rampage on the central Ermou shopping street, smashing the windows of at least 10 shops.

Meanwhile, in Thessaloniki a group of around 10 men set fire to dumpsters outside the northern port city’s Aristotle University, while in the western city of Patra, the Agriculture Ministry came under a hail of Molotov cocktails.

On Tuesday inmates at maximum-security Korydallos Prison also held a sit-in in the penitentiary’s common areas in solidarity with the 29-year-old. They had staged a similar protest on Saturday, ahead of his transfer. Giagtzoglou is believed to have sent the parcel bomb that seriously injured former prime minister Lucas Papademos in May 2016 and another which wounded an employee at the International Monetary Fund office in Paris in March of that year. On Sunday unidentified assailants scattered fliers outside Papademos’s home in Palaio Psychico, northern Athens, and spraypainted slogans on the sidewalk outside the property, also in solidarity with Giagtzoglou.