ATHENS, Greece — Domestic terrorism increased “significantly” in Greece last year after riots in December 2008 sparked by the fatal police shooting of a teenager, the U.S. State Department says in an annual report on terrorism.
Experts and law enforcement officials argue that new terrorism groups appear to have broken with the past tradition of militancy in Greece and no longer claim to espouse any clear objectives or political ideology.
The U.S. report noted more than 430 “security incidents” — including incendiary attacks and those using explosives, guns and grenades — in 2009, more than those recorded any other year for the past two decades.
“Local extremists increasingly targeted businesses and Greek law enforcement, and there was an increasing use of infantry-style weaponry in terrorist attacks,” said the State Department report, issued late Thursday.
Although the document deals with last year, the issue of domestic terrorism came to the fore once more after one of the newer groups to emerge, which has dubbed itself Sect of Revolutionaries, claimed responsibility last week for gunning down a journalist outside his home in July.
Sect of Revolutionaries emerged in the wake of the December 2008 riots, carrying out gun and grenade attacks against an Athens police station in January 2009 and a private TV station the following month.
Although those caused no injuries, the group soon escalated its attacks, killing an anti-terrorism police officer guarding a witness in a terrorism trial in June 2009, and the journalist last month. Both were shot more than a dozen times and died on the spot.
While militant groups have been active in Greece for decades, previous organizations had sought to portray themselves as urban revolutionaries fighting for the oppressed, emerging from the resistance to the 1967-74 military dictatorship that left a legacy of deep-rooted mistrust of authority.
