Counter-terrorism police, with the arrests of five terror suspects on Thursday and Friday in three Athens districts, averted a series of attacks ahead of the trial of suspects in the "Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire" urban terror group that opens on Monday, police officials said on Saturday, based on evidence found in a house in the district of Vyronas that had been rented by the four suspects arrested on Thursday.
Four suspects, local men identified as as Haralambos Tsilianidis, 23, Dimitrios Fessas, 23, Dimitrios Dimtsiadis, 23, and Socrates Tzifkas, 21, were arrested on Thursday in the Vyronas and Tavros districts, and an assault rifle and an automatic handgun, along with ammunition, were recovered from two residences searched by the police.
The fifth suspect, a 27-year-old German woman, was arrested on Friday in the Perissos district.
The five face felony charges including establishment of and participation in a terrorist organisation and with weapons possession, while arrest warrants were outstanding for the four men in connection with the October 13, 2010 home-made bomb attack against the Public Power Corporation (PPC) offices in Thessaloniki.
The woman, identified as Marie Fee Meyer, was arrested in the Athens district of Perissos on Friday and according to police is the daughter of a 55-year-old female former "Red Army Faction" (RAF) operative, Barbara Meyer (a German national) who herself was the subject of a 1993 international warrant by German authorities for participation in the ultra-leftist terror group and surrendered to the Lebanese authorities in 1999.
Police said the woman, a German citizen, had contacts with all four of the suspects who were arrested in Vyronas and Tavros.
The names and photographs of the five suspects were released by police.
Police on Saturday said that evidence arising from the finds in the Vyronas residence, which had been rented by the four men, indicated that a series of attacks were planned in view of the trial opening on Monday.
They said that the hard drive of a PC seized from the Vyronas apartment included a "draft, 16-page proclamation in electronic format", according to the contents of which:
a) A new organisation, the name of which was not satisfied, was to assume responsibility for a series of explosions
b) The attacks would be made as a "show of solidarity" before the trial of the Conspiracy of Cells suspects that begins on Monday, January 17
c) Participation in an international organisation of organisations of violence would be claimed
The draft proclamation further contains extensive references and theoretical approaches attempting to justify acts of violence and terrorism, and points of dispute with the Revolutionary Struggle terrorist group on aspects in which it differentiates its position with respect to the action of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire.
The hard drive also contained compositions of the Judicial Councils throughout the country with evaluations, addresses of police departments, diagrams of regions, and photographic material of weapons systems.
source: ana
