Supposed terrorist described as «translator»
A prosecution witness at the November 17 trial in Greece named the terrorist groups alleged mastermind as one of the men she had seen entering a central Athens block of flats where N17 had stored most of its weaponry.
A prosecution witness identified positively Alexandros Yotopoulos in relation to November 17. Yotopoulos is decribed as «a 59-year-old, Paris-born translator» and has only been linked with one attack, but not as an assassin. A police raid on a small ground-floor flat on a building in Athens on July 3, 2002, revealed a safe house containing the groups flag, a typewriter and computer used to write proclamations as well as an assortment of arms including anti-tank rockets, automatic weapons and handguns.
The witness described Yotopoulos as «a well-dressed, good-looking gentleman with light-colored eyes and white hair at the temples».
November 17's first sensational act was the assassination of Richard Welch, Chief of the CIA Station in Athens, in 1975. Since then, November 17 has made many attacks on Turkish Missions in Greece. In its manifestos, November 17 defines itself as «Revolutionist Left Wing.» The organisation is active in Athens, and its targets are missions of the US, NATO bases, Turkish Missions, and some Greeks.
In Greece, the EEK (Workers Revolutionary Party), a little Trotskyist party, denounced the imprisonment of Yotopoulos as «a campaign against the Trotskyism and the left wing movement», related to the Olympic Games 2004.
