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REPUTED LEADER OF GREEK GUERRILLAS IS CHARGED IN MURDERS

By Anthee Carassava
The New York Times
Colaboración:
Armando F. Mastrapa III
New York
E.U.
La Nueva Cuba
Julio 20, 2002

ATHENS, July 19 — A 58-year-old mathematician believed to be a ringleader of the guerrilla group November 17 was charged today with crimes including murders, bomb attacks and bank robberies carried out during the 1980's.

The suspect, Alexandros Yiotopoulos, appeared in court, where he requested the assistance of a lawyer and extra time to prepare his deposition. He was granted a two-day extension.

Completion of that first legal procedure could lead Mr. Yiotopoulos to confinement in a maximum-security prison on the outskirts of Athens pending trial in connection with a string of attacks by November 17.

The Marxist-Leninist group, named for the date of a violent student uprising in 1973, has haunted Greece for nearly three decades. It has killed 23 people it accused of helping American or imperialist interests, including American intelligence officers, Turkish diplomats, a British military officer and several Greek businessmen.

It has long been on the State Department's list of terrorist groups. Despite pressure from the United States for action against the group, Mr. Yiotopoulos was the first person suspected of being a senior member to be identified by the Greek authorities. The pressure has only grown as Greece prepares for the 2004 Summer Olympics.

Prime Minister Costas Simitis promised that the police would thoroughly investigate the case.

"The time has come for the terrorists finally to account for their acts," he said in his first public comments since Mr. Yiotopoulos's arrest on Wednesday. Mr. Yiotopoulos has denied the charges against him.

Two other suspects were charged today with being foot soldiers in the group, bringing the total number of people in custody in the case to eight. The authorities said at least six more arrests were expected by the end of the week.

"It's like peeling an onion," said the United States ambassador to Athens, Thomas Miller. "We've got a strong sense of the perimeter, but we don't know what more we'll find as the case unfolds."

The police say they have fingerprints of Mr. Yiotopoulos from a November 17 weapons cache in Athens. The cache, hidden in an apartment building, was found after Greek counterterrorism agents questioned a man wounded in a bungled bombing attempt on June 29. That man, Savas Xiros, is among those in custody.

A four-page printout of a proclamation, found with the weapons cache, featured text corrections in handwriting that matches Mr. Yiotopoulos's, the police said.
"The investigation is ongoing," said a senior police official. "But rest assure that our cause for calling him a leading figure is well founded."

In Washington on Thursday the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, said it was premature to discuss any possibility that the United States might seek the extradition of Mr. Yiotopoulos and November 17 members linked to attacks against Americans in Greece.

Mr. Yiotopoulos was born in Paris. His ties to armed violence, the authorities say, date to his student years in Paris and the rebellious groups he formed as part of a Greek resistance movement that helped topple the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974.

Mr. Yiotopoulos, an admirer of the guerrilla leader Che Guevara, went to Cuba for urban guerrilla training, according to a report in the Athens daily To Vima. His father, Dimitris, was a prominent figure in the Greek and international Trotskyist movements.

ISRAEL’S FORGOTTEN ENEMY
IT’S FIDEL CASTRO

By Myles Kantor
National Review
La Nueva Cuba
Agosto 4, 2002

Attacks of Palestinian resistance activists in Israeli territory" is how a state-controlled newspaper recently euphemized suicide massacres. Its headlines on Israel in 2002 have included:

"Israeli soldiers sack, torture and execute police and civilians in West Bank" (April 8) "Sharon announces continuation of Palestinian holocaust" (April 9) "Israeli repression continues" (April 20) "Israeli troops invade Hebron and kill 8 Palestinians" (April 30)

This reeks of Saudi Arabia's Ar-Riyadh or Egypt's Al-Ahram, but the source is much closer to America: Cuba's Granma International.

In April, Granma also referred to "the genocidal actions of the Israeli army" and included a photograph of an anti-Israel rally with the poster, "SHARON=HITLER." Granma's caption below the photograph read, "The poster says it all. It is a certainty that crosses the world."

Fidel Castro's totalitarian regime has Nazified Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War; Cuba's ambassador to the United Nations described Israel's preemptive strike against imminent Arab belligerence as a "surprise attack in the Nazi manner." In 1988, Cuba published The Other Face: The Truth about the Secret Relationships between Nazism and Zionism by Mahmud Abbas (a.k.a., Abu Mazzen, secretary general of the PLO's executive committee). Abbas disputes the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis and claims that Zionists murdered more than the Nazis. The cover of The Other Face connects a swastika with the Star of David.

When he's not accusing Israel of Nazism, Castro has been a reliable ally of anti-Zionist violence and propaganda. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Castro deployed thousands of troops including tank commanders and pilots to aid Syrian aggression against Israel. Yasser Arafat visited Cuba in 1974 and received its highest honor, the National Order of the Bay of Pigs.

In 1975, the United Nations passed an infamous resolution that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." Cuba was on the side of the anti-Zionists, and Granma praised the resolution for demonstrating "the identical imperialist origins and racist structure of the Israeli Zionist regime that is occupying Palestine and the one that is exploiting the black masses in South Africa." The U.N. repealed the resolution in 1991, which Cuba opposed.

The Cuban embassy in Beirut was Arafat's headquarters during Israel's campaign to rout the brutal PLO mini-state in southern Lebanon. Neil C. Livingstone and David Halevy write in Inside the PLO, "Many of the PLO fighters captured by the Israelis during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon had been provided with advanced training in Cuba, including various special operations and demolitions courses."

Castro's aid to Israel's enemies continues to this day. Irving Louis Horowitz notes in the spring issue of The National Interest that "Training and arming Palestinians from the PLO forces [by Cuba] is ongoing." Granma admitted as much on March 30: "Cuba reiterates its full support for the heroic struggle of the Arab peoples, in particular that of the Palestinians, against Israeli occupation and aggression, and declares its solidarity with their resistance and defiance [emphasis added]."

And have Jewish organizations denounced Castro's demonization of the Jewish homeland and sponsorship of its enemies?

A visit to the Anti-Defamation League's website finds reports and press releases on anti-Zionism in Arab media but nothing on Cuban anti-Zionism. Cuban Jews' silence is understandable; to criticize Granma or Castro risks being charged with "crimes" like "enemy propaganda" and "disrespect."

In addition to being the most anti-Zionist regime in the Western hemisphere, Cuba is one of only seven regimes classified by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism. While chronically histrionic, Fidel Castro is no mere buffoon. This autocrat perpetrates savagery internally and promotes it abroad. Friends of America and Israel should be mindful of this menace.

— Myles Kantor is director of the Center for Free Emigration.