Greek far-left assassin moves to farm prison

ATHENS: A Greek far-left militant convicted for multiple murders was moved to a farm prison yesterday, officials said, days after the government was criticized for a similar move last week. Christodoulos Xiros, a 60-year-old leading member of the defunct November 17 extremist organization, was moved from maximum security Korydallos prison in Athens to a farm prison in Halkida, justice ministry sources said.

The move came just days after another exNovember 17 assassin, 60-year-old Dimitris Koufontinas, was likewise moved to another farm prison in Volos, where inmates engage in open-air manual labor. The decision by the leftist-led government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was strongly condemned by victims’ families and foreign governments who have lost nationals to the outfit. The shadow November 17 group, named after an anti-junta student uprising, was behind the 1975 killing of the CIA’s Athens station chief Richard Welch, and claimed responsibility for assassinating 23 people in scores of attacks on US, British, Turkish and Greek targets between the 1970s and 1990s.

US state department spokesperson Heather Nauert on August 3 said Koufontinas “is inspiring the next generation of terrorists. We condemn in the strongest terms furloughs or any easing of his prison stay,” she said in a statement. The Turkish foreign ministry also called Koufontinas’ transfer “disrespectful” to the memory of Turkish diplomats slain by the group. The Greek justice ministry said the transfers were part of a policy to turn Korydallos into a correctional facility for suspects in pre-trial detention.

There was similar criticism in recent months when Koufontinas — November 17’s top hitman and a hero figure to radical anarchists in Greece — was briefly allowed out on leave on three occasions. Members of the ruling Syriza party have repeatedly been accused by opposition critics of ideological links to the far-left and of being soft on far-left extremism. Xiros had gone missing after been given leave in 2014 by a nonleftist government. He was recaptured several months later.