Europe’s Most Wanted Woman: Panagiota Roupa and the Rebirth of Greek Anarchist Group Revolutionary Struggle
Europe’s Most Wanted Woman: Panagiota Roupa and the Rebirth of Greek Anarchist Group Revolutionary Struggle
The economic chaos of the last six years has dramatically affected Greek politics, allowing extremism to flourish, from the right-wing Golden Dawn party to the revitalization of the anarchist guerrilla group Revolutionary Struggle. On October 17, Panagiota (Pola) Roupa, the 45-year-old de facto head of Revolutionary Struggle, released a 13-page, 7,500 word manifesto titled “Armed Struggle, Revolutionary Movement and Social Revolution.” She wrote that Revolutionary Struggle “is alive” and insisted on renewing armed action. [1] The manifesto is a theoretical analysis of the armed struggle and Revolutionary Struggle’s operations for 2004-2009, calling on fellow anarchists to join forces in major attacks. The manifesto did not provide specific details about these attacks beyond mentioning that they would target the regime (Greek Reporter, October 18). Greek security officials worry that this new round of attacks is a result of the detention of Nikos Maziotis, the incarcerated leader of Revolutionary Struggle and Roupa’s husband. As a mark of the government’s concern, Roupa is the only woman in Europe with a reward of one million euros for her involvement with domestic terrorism (AP, April 15, 2010).
The Birth of Panagiota Roupa and Revolutionary Struggle
Born in 1969 and raised in Kalamata, Roupa became an honors mathematics student at Athens University. Politically active even then, she was arrested for the first time in 1991 for putting up anti-government posters. Describing her detention at the State Security, she said: “I experienced state brutality first hand. It was then, that for the first time I told myself that we are at war with the state.” Four years later, Roupa took part in sit-ins at the National Technical University of Athens (Athens Polytechnic), where she met her future husband Nikos Maziotis; during the subsequent November 18, 1995 police raid, Roupa was arrested and served another prison sentence of several months (Ta Nea [Athens], August 14).
Revolutionary Struggle is a Greek militant group deriving its ideology from various former Greek leftist terrorist groups, including Revolutionary Organization 17 November (N17) and Revolutionary People’s Struggle (Epanastatikos Agonas – EA). Revolutionary Struggle aims to overthrow the existing economic and political order in Greece and is opposed to the influence of globalization and capitalism on Greek society. So far, Revolutionary Struggle seems to be following the classic Greek pattern of inflicting property damage to make their points rather than the death of innocent bystanders, unlike its predecessor N17, which committed 23 murders in its 26-year existence before being dismantled (BBC, July 30, 2002). Revolutionary Struggle’s formation is linked to the successful Greek counter-terrorism actions against its predecessors. Some analysts believe that Revolutionary Struggle was founded by the N17 members that escaped arrest (Periodiko Zenith, July 3, 2013).
Revolutionary Struggle emerged on September 6, 2003, by claiming responsibility for the bombing of an Athenian courthouse, where one police officer died. Many viewed the attack as an attempt to influence the trial of N17 members, which was being held there (AP, September 6, 2003). The group is best known for firing a Chinese-made rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. Embassy in Athens on January 12, 2007. The attack damaged the front of the building, but caused no casualties. [2] In the wake of the RPG attack on the U.S. Embassy in Athens on January 12, 2007, as it had with the earlier N17 attacks, the U.S. government offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the capture of Revolutionary Struggle members, with the Greek government matching the move with a €800,000 reward of its own (AP, April 15, 2010). In June 2007, the European Union (EU) designated Revolutionary Struggle as a recognized terrorist organization (IRNA, June 29, 2007). On May 18, 2009, the U.S. government followed suit. [3]
It is unknown when and how Roupa and Maziotis came to be involved with Revolutionary Struggle. Roupa has stated that she was aware of state surveillance on Maziotis and herself in 2003, roughly the same time as when the group went public (Athens.Indymedia.org, October 27, 2011). While decisions in Revolutionary Struggle were made collectively, Maziotis and Roupa came to be regarded as the group’s leaders. [4] Roupa was Maziotis’ comrade in every Revolutionary Struggle decision, operation and manifesto, but took over the day-to-day operations upon his arrest.
After the 2003 courthouse bombing and failed U.S. embassy attack, the police also attributed many bombing attacks to Revolutionary Struggle, all in Athens. Among the most significant assaults were the June 2, 2005 Labor Ministry bombing; the December 12, 2005 bombing of the Finance Ministry; the May 30, 2006 attempted assassination of Georgios Voulgarakis, former Minister of Public Order, now Minister of Culture, and the September 2, 2009 car bombing of the Stock Exchange building, which caused serious damage. [5]
Greek Efforts against Revolutionary Struggle
In multiple raids in Athens on April 11, 2010, Greek counter-terrorist forces arrested six suspected Revolutionary Struggle members, including Roupa and Maziotis (Athens-Macedonian News Agency, April 11, 2010.). Police Chief Lefteris Oikonomou said that hard drives found inside a car owned by one of the detainees contained Revolutionary Struggle statements, including one claiming responsibility for the embassy attack. Also uncovered during the vehicle search were two handguns, ammunition and €119,240 ($161,500) in cash, along with three fake identity cards, all bearing the same photograph of one of the suspects. Statements were found on the hard drives linking to 16 Revolutionary Struggle attacks between 2003 and 2009, including three bombings or attempted bombings against the U.S. bank Citibank (Fimotro, April 15, 2010).
The trial of eight suspected Revolutionary Struggle members, accused of taking part in several raids that included the U.S. Embassy attack and the nonfatal shooting of policeman Diamantis Matzounis in January 2009, was set for October 5, 2011 after Maziotis, Roupa and the others were arrested in April 2010. Aside from Roupa and Maziotis, the accused were Costas Gournas, Christoforos Kortetsis, Evangelos Stathopoulos, Sarantos Nikitopoulos and Maria Beracha, while another suspected Revolutionary Struggle member, Costas Katsenos, who remains at large, was to be tried in absentia (Ekathimerini [Athens], August 2, 2011). Despite her detention, Roupa gave birth to her son Lambros-Victor on July 24, 2010.
The authorities then released Maziotis, Roupa and Gournas on October 11, prior to the resumption of their trial on October 24, after they had served 18 months in pretrial custody, the legal maximum for their pretrial detention. The trio was released on strict conditions, including a ban on leaving Attica prefecture (Ekathimerini [Athens], October 11, 2011). However, Maziotis and Roupa failed to show up for their October 2011 required check-in at the precinct and the Greek Counter-terrorism Unit was not informed by the local police precinct of this until July 2012. [6] On April 3, 2013, the court in Athens convicted five Revolutionary Struggle members on terrorism-related charges. Gournas was sentenced to 25 years in prison, Vaggelis Stathopoulos 7 1/2 years and Christoforos Kortesis seven years. Maziotis and Roupa were subsequently sentenced to 25 years in absentia (Athens-Macedonian News Agency, April 3, 2013).
In early 2014, the Greek police intensified their campaign against Revolutionary Struggle. On January 22, they announced €4 million in rewards for information leading to the arrest of Panagiota Roupa, Nikos Maziotis and radicals Christodoulos Xiro and others who were alleged to have participated in a drive-by attack against the right-wing Golden Dawn on November 1, 2013, in northern Athens, where two were killed and another injured. The Hellenic Police also released photographs of the suspects. [7]
The assault on Golden Dawn was significant, as it pitted anarchists against a political party that many considered to be fascist. Golden Dawn rose from obscurity on a wave of discontent to become Greece’s third most powerful political party, running on an anti-immigrant, anti-austerity platform in the 2012 Greek national elections, where they received 7 percent of the popular vote, entering Parliament for the first time with 21 seats (Christian Science Monitor, October 3, 2013). The government considers Golden Dawn a group of neo-Nazis and has vowed to eradicate it (Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata, September 20, 2013).
On July 16, Maziotis was recaptured following a shootout in Athens’ central Monastiraki district, after which Roupa took their child and fled their Athens residence (Greek Reporter, August 10). Two days later, acting on a tip and using one of the keys found on Maziotis, police located and raided a fifth-floor apartment in Athens’ northern suburb of Marousi, where the couple lived with their 4-year-old son. Most unsettling for the police, they discovered that the couple had lived in the apartment for the previous 18 months. The counter-terrorism squad searched the apartment but reportedly found no weapons or explosives, nor any information indicating Roupa’s whereabouts (Times of Change, July 19). Police suspected that Roupa might be armed, as an empty gun holster was found in the apartment, and she was also believed to have removed from the house a computer with key evidence (Ekathimerini [Athens], July 23).
Even though Greek security forces have failed to apprehend Roupa in the wake of Maziotis’ arrest, on October 2, in southeast Athens, security forces took 31-year-old Revolutionary Struggle member Andonis Stamboulos into custody as part of a police operation to stop an impending terrorist attack against the capital. Greek police said that Stamboulos carried plans for a weekend attack on the headquarters of the ruling New Democracy party and a list of potential high-profile targets. They also reported that Stamboulos refused to cooperate with examining magistrates during a nearly three-hour interrogation session (Greek Reporter, October 3). Further linking Stamboulos to Revolutionary Struggle, the suspect was taken into custody outside a garage, which had been put under surveillance for several days as part of an undercover operation to locate Roupa via her family car, a silver Hyundai Accent that Maziotis bought under the name of Michalis Michelakis. According to Public Order Minister Vassilis Kikilias, a search on the garage turned up the roof rack and keys of the stolen Nissan that was used in a car bomb attack outside the Bank of Greece in April 2013, which was claimed by Revolutionary Struggle. Stamboulos’ contract for the rental of the garage bore Maziotis’s fingerprints, Kikilias added (Newsbomb.gr, October 3). In her October 17 manifesto, Roupa referred to Stamboulos as an “anarchist comrade.” [8]
Conclusion
Since Maziotis’ arrest after nearly two years on the run, Roupa has become the leader of Revolutionary Struggle and her October 17 manifesto has increased fears that she will plan and execute a new attack, as her announcement clearly indicates her intention to continue Revolutionary Struggle’s urban guerilla fighting. Counter-terrorism police concluded from earlier investigations that most Revolutionary Struggle members change their location every six months as a precautionary measure. Worse for security officials, their inability to find Roupa underlined that the organization retains significant resources to assist fugitives in disappearing without a trace and remaining covert (Ekathimerini [Athens], August 9).
While the rest of Europe is preoccupied with jihadist terrorism, leftist terrorist networks are reemerging in Greece, as the country is again experiencing the kind of problems it faced in the 1970s: injustice, corruption, economic chaos, weak infrastructure and democratic participation issues. Complicating the problem for Greece’s counter-terrorism forces, Greek society’s attitudes to terrorist strikes are ambivalent and range from nonchalance to tacit support of urban guerrilla groups because of the country’s rampant problems.
Authorities estimate that there are now 18 or 19 Greek anarchist and urban guerilla warfare groups (Irish Times, February 5). These include not only Revolutionary Struggle, but also Group 325, February 12 Movement, Militant Popular Revolutionary Forces, Conspiracy of The Nuclei of Fire, Popular Revolutionary Action, the Guerrilla Terrorist Group, Popular Will and Ambush (GlobalPost, June 30, 2010). Given Greece’s ongoing fiscal problems, the appeal of Roupa’s “libertarian communism” is unlikely to dissipate anytime soon and authorities are left to wondering what Roupa is planning.
Dr. John C. K. Daly is a Eurasian foreign affairs and defense policy expert for The Jamestown Foundation and a non-resident fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington DC.
Notes
1. Panagiotis Spyropoulos, “Pola Roupa: O Epanastatikos Agonas den tha pethanei pote,” THETOC, October 18, 2014, https://www.thetoc.gr/koinwnia/article/pola-roupa-o-epanastatikos-agwnas-den-tha-pethanei-pote.
2. “Act of Terror. Information leading to those responsible for Attack on U.S. Embassy,” Athens, Greece, January 12, 2007, https://www.rewardsforjustice.net/english/us_embassy_athens.html.
3. “In the Matter of the Designation of Revolutionary Struggle a.k.a. Epanastatikos Aghonas as a Foreign Terrorist Organization Pursuant to Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as Amended, 23226 [E9-11546],” Federal Register, Vol. 74, No. 94, May 18, 2009, https://regulations.justia.com/regulations/fedreg/2009/05/18/E9-11546.html.
4. Pola Roupa, Nikos Maziotis, Kostas Gournas, “A political letter to society,” December 13, 2010, https://325.nostate.net/?tag=pola-rupa.
5. “Revolutionary Struggle case – International Call for Solidarity with the Revolutionary Struggle [Greece],” https://revolutionarystrugglecase.blogspot.com/2010/09/letter-from-comrade-pola-roupa-of-july.html.
6. “Chapter 2,” Country Reports: Europe Overview, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Country Reports on Terrorism 2012, May 30, 2013, https://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2012/209981.htm.
7. “22-01-2014:? Prokiryxi chrimatikis amoivis,” Elli?niki Astynomia, https://www.astynomia.gr/index.php?option=ozo_content&perform=view&id=1298&Itemid=171&lang=.
8. Panagiotis Spyropoulos, Op cit.
