20 Jan 2014

Fugitive Greek terrorist: ‘It is our job to light the fuse’

Currently on the run, Christodoulos Xiros a convicted member of the Greek terrorist group November 17, appears in an online video promising to avenge the country’s debt crisis.

In the video, which was uploaded to the Indymedia website, 56-year-old Xiros appeared in front of pictures of the revolutionary leader Che Guevara, two Greek independence fighters and a world war two communist resistance leader.

‘It is our job to light the fuse’

Xiros called on left-wingers and anarchists to unite against politicians, journalists and police, saying:

“What are we waiting for? If we don’t react immediately, now, today, we will cease to exist as people.”

Railing against the effects of the debt crisis that has plunged the country into a six-year recession, Xiros said:

“Society is collapsing, thousands of suicides, hundreds of thousands in food lines, one and a half million unemployed. More and more are working without getting paid, people are dying next to us from hunger and cold, they are sleeping on benches and pavements.”

He went on: “It is time for battle, the enemy is in front of us and we must all face him. Begin now, door to door, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, there is no time to lose… We must be out on the streets. It is our job to light the fuse. Comrades of armed struggle, both free and imprisoned, we must all understand that this is our time.”

Police manhunt

Xiros was serving multiple life sentences for being a member of the disbanded marxist group November 17.

To the acute embarrassment of the government, he failed to returned to Korydallos prison in Athens when expected on 7 January after being allowed out on eight days of family leave over the New Year.

The police have been hunting for him ever since.

The Greek Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias declined to comment on the content of the video, but said the police were working hard to put Xiros back in prison where he belonged.

In a separate written statement uploaded on Indymedia, Xiros said that convincing prison authorities to give him leave was “a personal success” and warned he would “wield my rifle again”.

“Your kingdom is over but you don’t know it,” he wrote.

Deadly campaign

November 17, Greece’s most lethal guerrilla group, was named after the date of a crushed 1973 student uprising against the then-ruling military junta, was dismantled in 2002 after a bomb exploded in the hands of Xiros’s brother Savas.

More than 10 members of the group were convicted for 23 killings – including of Greek, U.S. and British businessmen, politicians and diplomats – and dozens of bomb attacks spanning three decades.

Topics

,