Friday, January 16, 2009

Greek far-left group threatens police, calls for armed uprising

Greek far-left outfit Revolutionary Struggle on Thursday threatened fresh attacks on police after two hits in which a young policeman was injured and called for an armed uprising to overthrow capitalism.

In an eight-page manifesto published in Greek weekly Pontiki, the elusive group considered Greece's most dangerous extremist organisation said it fired on police to avenge the fatal shooting of a teenager by an officer last month.

"We respond to bullets with bullets ... from now on, we can only defend with arms the value of human life of the poor, the outcasts, the damned," it said.

The death of 15-year-old Alexander Grigoropoulos on December 6 sparked a wave of violence unseen in Greece for decades. Young protestores battled police across the country and hundreds of stores were vandalised, which the group said was "a good message for what is to follow."

"Society is a boiling cauldron. The cop's bullet sparked a long-awaited social conflagration which heralds even wider uprisings.

"For the first time in many decades, a path opens ... to overthrow the political and economic system," the manifesto said.

"Are we going to let capitalism overcome the crisis or are we going to overthrow it?" it said.

Best known for firing an anti-tank rocket at the US embassy in Athens in 2007, Revolutionary Struggle said the attacks on police also came in reprisal for a long tradition of unpunished brutality to protesters and migrants.

"The cop who aimed at and killed 15-year-old Alexander Grigoropoulos gave the coup-de-grace to a dying social tolerance towards the countless crimes of organised political and economic power," the group said.

The manifesto is considered authentic, a police source said.

The group said two of its members on January 5 ambushed a police patrol behind the Greek culture ministry and seriously injured policeman Diamantis Matzounis, 21, who is still hospitalised after multiple surgery.

A fortnight earlier, Revolutionary Struggle said it had fired shots at a riot police van that missed the 23 officers on board.

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