THE TRIAL OF STATHIS PANAGOULIS

The trial of Stathis Panagoulis (26), began in Athens last Thursday. The main charge against him and 12 others is that they tried to organize the escăpe from prison of brother Alexandros.

Stathis, the youngest of three Panagoulis brothers, had found a safe refuge in Ri ome after Alexandros had un: juCcessfully attempted to kill Papadopoulos, the head of present military regime, in August 1968.

Alexandros, who was student at that time doing military service, was arrested, inhumanly tortured and sentenced to death. He suffered three mock executions, was handcufted for eight months continuously and for four and a half years has lived under terrible conditions in a cement tomb, being tortured on and off at the whim of his bestial guards. (See the statement of Alexandros Panagoulis in Friday's Workers Press.)

On August 6, 1972, Stathis was lured back to Athens by the military police. To achieve this they exploited the young man's anguish for his brother's fate. One or more officers approached him and pretending they were friends, convinced him that they would help Alexandros to escape. But that at that point Stathis would have to be in Athens to take over and help his brother out of Greece.

Stathis fell into the trap. He entered Greece under false name on August 6. He must have been arrested soon after August 8 when he was last heard of.

Since then he has been kept at the special interrogation centre of the military police, the notorious 'ESA' to the Greeks.

Stathis has been horribly tortured. Over a period of months his screams and moans were heard day and night. To break the resistance of others, the martyred body of the young man was dragged before them and he was tortured again.

For about 160 days no one outside the military centre, neither his lawyer nor his mother, have been allowed to see him.

The charges brought against him include, among others, that in 1970 Stathis thought of hijacking Olympic airways plane. That he had a list of diplomats, copied in the right order from the booklet of diplomats' addresses, by which the military deduced that he wanted to kidnap these diplomats.

Among them, though, is the name of the German Ambassador, Mr Limbourg, whose recall the military regime achieved, with great clamour, months before Stathis' clandestine entry into Greece. He is also charged with the new escape attempt which has existed only in the militarists' minds and was their trap.

Two members of the Panagoulis family are already dead.

The father, a retired colonel, suffered a brain haemorrhage while in the hands of the Security Police, after Alexandros' assassination attempt. He died two years later without having recovered enough to say how he got the brain haemorrhage.

The eldest son, George, an officer who deserted the army immediately after the coup, escaped from Greece but was Stathis Panagoulis on trial for trying to help his brother escape. handed back to the military regime and disappeared while in their hands.

There is now only an old mother left in the family house, who, in the hope of seeing her children, spends hours standing outside the prisons.

The 12 other defendants suffer in the first place because Stathis happened to cross their path. Some, like Demetrios Dinou (61), a retired police officer, is supposed to have harboured Stathis when he was hiding in Athens.

Dinou, however, was arrested as a hostage for the return of his daughter, student Evi (21), who had escaped from Greece to evade arrest and shared a flat in Rome with Stathis and Nicos Zambelis, another escapee.

The commanding officer of the military police, a renowned torturer, had rung Evi asking her to return and surrender otherwise her family would be arrested. Her father's and her sister's arrest followed Evi's refusal to return. Both were tortured.

Evi's sister was released some three and a half months later. But the father is still in their hands charged that he had arms hidden in his house, that he was to help Stathis hijack a plane, that he had helped the escape of Nicos Zambelis.

In general the charge for the remaining 1l accused is that they gave refuge to Stathis or Dinou or Zambelis for one or more days. Some are charged with helping the escape of Evi or Zambelis, either by persuading Evi to go or by taking her to a car, or by taking Zambelis away in a boat.

In addition they are charged with intending to help Stathis in his thought of hijacking of a plane.

These 11 defendants are:

(24), Pharmacist.

PANAGHIOTIS CHIONIDES (23), Student.

MARIA NASTOU (25), ent.

DORA TSANOU (34), servant.

PANAGHIOTIS LORNA CAVIGLIA BRIFFA (30), Italian publisher of magazines.

THEODOROS KYRIAKOPOULOS (44), Private employee. ARISTIDES FATOUROS (30), Carpenter. (A relative of Zambelis.)

SOPHIA • GEORGIOU (35), Beautician.

EFTATHIOS MELAS (37), Electrical engineer.

ANDREAS STAVROULAKIS (44), Acountant.

All political prisoners in Greece are beaten and tortured. It is known that Dora Tsanou, in particular, has been horribly tortured.

Stathis Panagoulis spoke up bravely in court, declaring before the five-member military tribunal that he had been tortured during his five-month interrogation by military police.

He also told the court that 'anti-fascist Italy is being tried in the person of Mrs Caviglia' Naval non - commissioned officer George Economides, the agent provocateur who implicated Mrs Caviglia in the imaginary plot, appeared in court as a prosecution witness.

The entire British labour movement must demand the immediate release of the Panagoulis brothers and of all political prisoners in Greece.