The assassination of Richard Welch by N17
Killing of CIA station chief marked the first appearance of the ‘revolutionary’ organization and a new chapter for political terrorism in Greece
Terrorist organizations and acts appeared later in Greece than in other European countries. This delay is attributed to the seven-year dictatorship that had plunged the country into a quagmire of complete social control through the suspension of social and political rights and the erosion of institutions, as well as the fact that Greece was under foreign domination while internationally isolated because of the junta.
The dictatorship had fallen in the summer of 1974, after the dramatic events of the coup against President Makarios and the subsequent Turkish invasion of Cyprus, while in Greece the trial of its leaders began a year later. The country was coming out of the seven-year dictatorship with painful memories and consequences.
Among them were those of persecution, torture, exile and wrongful sentencing for thousands of people, as well as the subsequent development backlash, the state of being an economic backwater etc.
The political opinions and behavior of the broad majority of Greeks were carefully recorded and the security authorities kept a personal file on each Greek citizen. They were constantly brought in for interrogation on “personal” matters, while censorship and fear prevailed in every aspect of expression and communication.
There are many detailed articles and books about this period, but we must point out that we were in the middle of a bipolar world with great tensions between the two superpowers. While abolishing every notion of legal order, the colonels’ dictatorship imposed on Greece was supported by the American services which during that period had overthrown many democratically elected governments around the world and imposed dictatorships on the pretext of preventing some of these countries from flipping to the “Eastern Coalition” countries.
It took many years (see US President Bill Clinton’s visit in Athens in 1996) for the US to formally “apologize” for past actions and interventions, the consequences of which are still being documented and still have a traumatic effect on the collective memory of the Greek people.
The terrorist organization November 17 made its first appearance in December 1975. That was when the CIA station chief in Greece was assassinated. Thus, the phenomenon of political terrorism, already present in other European countries, arrived in Greece. Initially, there was disbelief about the surfacing of N17.
The acts were considered to be the work of foreign perpetrators, or a “settling of scores” between US secret services. Greek society was unprepared for such a development.
‘The proclamation was initially treated by the authorities as a hoax, and the assassination as the result of internal conflicts inside the American services’