14 June, 2021: News Roundup

A periodic news roundup of stories posted by @potempkinbrain on Twitter[dot]com

[Arrest of Yannis Dimitrakis and Kostas Sakkas, 2019]

(May-June News Roundup: German eco-militants attacked various infrastructure throughout the country, and unknown assailants firebombed a police motor pool in Bremen; there has been a surge of deadly shootings across Greece related to organized crime as Minister of Citizen Protection, Michalis Chrisochoidis, vows to take on the country’s “mafia”; a private company’s survey crew was chased out of Exarcheia in the first small encounter of what will be an escalating series of battles over the future of the downtown Athens neighborhood; a 55-year-old man on Cyprus discovered an unexploded bomb attached to the bottom of his vehicle; Rosa Nera squat on Crete has been re-occupied nine months after its eviction by police; the Direct Action Cells claim three attacks in solidarity with an imprisoned Greek accused of belonging to the Organization for Revolutionary Self-Defense, and an improvised explosive device is detonated outside of a police station in the Cholargos borough of Athens; suspected member of the Popular Fighters Group/Conspiracy Cells of Fire and convicted bank robber, Yannis Dimitrakis, is hospitalized after being assaulted in Domokos Prison by a fellow inmate.)

Eco-Militant Guerrilla Group Attacks Electrical Cables Outside of Future Tesla Factory in Grünheide; Anarchists Firebomb a Riot Police Motor Pool in Bremen (Germany)

In the early morning hours of May 26th, a German eco-militant guerrilla outfit calling themselves Vulkangruppe (“Volcano Group”) set fire to power cables outside of the Tesla automaker’s Giga Berlin factory in nearby Grünheide, which is currently under construction and expected to begin manufacturing electric cars later this year. They released a communique on an anarchist website claiming the attack, and criticizing Tesla for both their impact on the local community as well as for the environmental impact of their global operations:

Tesla is neither green nor ecological nor social. Tesla is a company that exploits the land and lives of people on a global scale; it relies on (and reproduces) colonial conditions. Our fire stands against lies about green cars. Our goal was the sabotage of the construction site of the Gigafactory de Tesla. The end of the ideology of unlimited technological progress and the global destruction of the planet will not be done only by great words.

Against the progress of destruction - we put forward sabotage.

Climate strike for a different world!

Volcano Group: Against the progress of destruction

The saboteurs reportedly tethered the cables to a chain-link fence and dowsed them in an inflammable liquid, then set them alight, causing a small patch of forest to catch on fire as well. Contrary to the communique’s claim to have cut power to the factory, the power supply was actually uninterrupted during and after the attack, and despite damage done to the cables.

Vulkangruppe made their debut in 2011 with an attack on Deutsche Bahn (DB, or “German Railway”) tracks just outside of Berlin. Cells belonging to the Vulkangruppen based in Berlin and Hamburg have claimed multiple attacks on similar infrastructural targets in Germany since, mostly employing the same methods of sabotage deliberately executed to avoid injury or loss of life. Their successive communiques establish themselves as an anti-authoritarian, feminist, eco-militant organization. [Analysis of group ideology, history, and translation of original German texts were provided by @MilNilAn]

Perhaps unrelated to the attack recently claimed by a cell of the Vulkangruppen, on May 25th around 20,000 German homes were without power in east Munich following another attack on infrastructure. A communique posted on an anarchist website claimed to have originally targeted Rhodes & Schwarz, an electronics company with government contracts in the areas of arms production and cybersecurity. The assailants started a fire in a construction pit that apparently knocked out underground power cables.

On the night of June 6th, unknown individuals attacked a riot police substation in Bremen, firebombing a motor pool with Molotov cocktails, which destroyed three vans and a bus. According to a claim published on an anarchist website, the attack was in solidarity with a Yazidi refugee from Iraq that died while in police custody in Delmenhorst, earlier this year. Police accused 19-year-old Qosay Sadam Khalaf and another man of using illegal narcotics in a public park and detained him in order to take a blood sample. During his detention, German officers allege Khalaf assaulted them, and that he was subsequently pepper-sprayed and placed in a holding cell, where he later lost consciousness and died in a hospital the following day.

A Wave of Organized Crime Hits are Met with Minister Chrisochoidis’ Vow to Take on the “Mafia” (Greece)

Greeks were shocked in April of this year by the brazen daylight slaying of well-known crime reporter, Giorgos Karaivaz. According to a witness, two men in masks pulled up on a motorbike and fired 10 rounds into the veteran reporter with a suppressed handgun, before calmly getting back on the bike and driving away. Citing previous murders, Greek authorities believe the Karaivaz killing was a contract hit carried out by foreign gunmen employed by an organization known as “Mafia Greece”. However, there has also been speculation that the Karaivaz hit was related to the deceased’s coverage of the high-profile Dimitris Lignadis scandal, in which the famous actor and director was accused of acts of sexual abuse against minors, and has since been arrested for serial rape.

Meanwhile, two retired boxers have been shot dead over the past month in what Greek authorities are calling gangland killings that are a part of an ongoing “turf war”. The first was killed in the northern Athens suburb of Metamorfosi. Two weeks later, an Albanian national was shot dead while sitting in a coffee shop in western Athens, and that same week a second retired boxer was killed in a drive-by shooting in the coastal town of Vari, just south of Athens.

In May, during an unrelated murder still tied to organized crime, a 54-year-old man was gunned down in broad daylight on the island of Zakynthos by two men using a Kalashnikov-pattern rifle, who later torched the weapon along with their vehicle and escaped the island by inflatable boat. The victim had survived a previous attempt on his life in 2020, in which gunmen murdered his wife. Seven arrests have just been made in connection with that murder.

Minister of Citizen Protection, Michalis Chrisochoidis, has vowed since earlier this year to take on organized crime in Greece, as a part of ruling-party New Democracy’s greater campaign of “law and order,” which so far has mostly focused on combating the country’s anarchists within squatted buildings, urban squares and university campuses. Plans are in the works to restructure the Attica Security Directorate and bring together units focused on narcotics, smuggling and organized crime into a single task force.

Anarchists in Exarcheia Prepare for the Coming Battles over the Future of the Neighborhood (Athens, Greece)

Locals expelled a survey crew from Exarcheia Square on May 31st, who promised to come back and continue their work. The presence of the survey crew marks the beginning of the government’s efforts to both purge anarchists from the neighborhood and redevelop it into a tourist area, effectively paving over what the New Democracy government considers to be its unsavory reputation—citing features that locals and proponents of Exarcheia say are at the core of its allure. Initial plans are to level the square at the center of the neighborhood, tearing out the trees and kiosks and lightpost, in order to turn it into the construction site of an underground metro station—one of four planned stations on Athens Metro’s new line. No one was injured during the altercation between the crew and locals, but there is a high likelihood that next time they return, they will be accompanied by police officers from the standing Greek riot force, the MAT.

Additionally, there are also plans to “refine” Exarcheia’s beloved Strefi Hill, one of the only green spaces in Athens. A rally was held outside of City Hall on Monday, June 14th, protesting a vote to begin the management study of Strefi Hill and exploratory plans for its future development.

The importance of Exarcheia, not just to anarchists but also to a complex milieu of artists, activists, immigrants and working-class Greeks cannot be overstated. It is arguably the historical and cultural epicenter of far-left and post-left movements in Greece, and despite the nightly images of black-clad youth hurling Molotov cocktails at the MAT, anyone who has ever been to Exarcheia cannot deny that it has been a place of tremendous creative productivity, where useful and pleasant things have been built in the place of car parks and urban decay. Passing through Exarcheia, it is an objectively jolly neighborhood. That said, it is a haven for Greek militants, and it will be these militants who again mobilize in large numbers in order to fight what will surely be some of the largest street battles seen in Greece this century—one that has been characterized already by extraordinary political violence.

Man Finds Unexploded Bomb Attached to the Bottom of his Car in Xylophagou (Cyprus)

A 55-year-old man in the coastal Cypriot village of Xylophagou notified police after discovering an unexploded bomb under his vehicle. Apparently, the bomb had failed to detonate. According to police, the man who found the bomb is known to have ties to organized crime.

Cyprus has seen a series of similar incidents involving bombs over the past six months, none of which have been lethal, and all are thought to be connected to organized crime on the Greek-administrated part of the island. A bomb went off outside of a medical center around 1:00AM in the Greek Cypriot capital, Nicosia, on December 28th of last year. On February 17th, police in Nicosia were seeking two individuals in connection with a grenade that was detonated outside of a doctor’s office, and that same day police in the capital had to defuse an unexploded bomb outside of business offices.

Rosa Nera Squat, Crete, has been Re-Occupied Nine Months after Its Eviction (Greece)

[Photo by @maria_louka]

In September 2020, Rosa Nera was one of multiple squats that had existed for over a decade (16 years, in this case) to be forcibly evicted by police across Crete and mainland Greece. It was the latest target of New Democracy’s broader campaign to crack down on anarchists and “lawlessness”. Rosa Nera is situated on Kastelli Hill in the Cretan city of Chania, where city officials have plans to develop tourist accommodations that are being bitterly resisted by locals, as similar plans are elsewhere throughout the country.

The re-occupation of Rosa Nera was non-violent, unlike its initial eviction. On June 5th, around 200 activists organized on Kastelli Hill and regained access to the building by cutting a lock off of the main gate. Police stood down and did not intervene, for the most part. Shortly after its recapture, anarchists in Chania draped a banner in solidarity with Rosa Nera squat.

Direct Action Cells Claim Three Attacks in Solidarity with Prisoners Alleged to be Members of the Organization for Revolutionary Self-Defense (Greece)

Greece’s newly formed anarchist urban guerrilla network, the Direct Action Cells (DAC), have claimed three attacks that took place in May of this year in solidarity with Vangelis Stathopoulos.  Stathopoulos is a martial arts instructor accused of having membership within the recently dismantled urban guerrilla group, the Organization for Revolutionary Self-Defense (OEA). According to DAC’s claim, on the night of Friday, May 11th, they attacked post offices in Piraeus and Neo Faliro, as well as a social services office in the Moschato suburb of Athens.

Similar attacks took place against ATMs in Piraeus and Moschato in March of this year, and at the same time an IED fashioned from gas cannisters was detonated outside of the police station in Cholargos. The attack on the police station in Cholargos is particularly significant, as it was in the Cholargos suburb of Athens that the fateful robbery of an OPAP gambling location took place in October 2019, which would lead to the unraveling of the defunct urban guerrilla group, OEA. The group’s point man, Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis, shot himself in the leg with the Kalashnikov-pattern rifle that he and his partner used to rob the store as they were still inside, but the two of them nonetheless managed to escape. Chatzivasileiadis fled to the house of a friend, Vangelis Stathopoulos, who agreed to take him in and arrange for clandestine medical care—part of which later took place in secrecy at a local hospital. While at his old friend’s, Chatzivasileiadis stored several “tools for resistance” (including five AK-pattern rifles, CS gas grenades, explosive materials and 17 detonators) at Stathopoulos’ home, which was raided by police shortly after Chatzivasileiadis decided to move locations. Stathopoulos and another man were charged with possession of the explosives and membership in a terrorist organization, the former having been sentenced to 19 years in prison at the end of May 2021. Chatzivasileiadis remains at-large, and was sentenced in absentia.

During their operational career, OEA was responsible for several high-profile attacks against state targets, including opening fire on riot police multiple times, and attacking the French Embassy with a hand grenade, in which a Greek police officer was wounded. Interestingly, since being on the run, Chatzivasileiadis has released multiple communiques, often speaking on politics in the United States with a unique level of interest. (This is not common for Greek anarchists, though it’s also not unprecedented.) In his recent writings, Chatzivasileiadis has given particular attention to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the police shooting of antifa militant Willem van Spronsen outside of an ICE facility during a lone-wolf attack carried out by van Spronsen, and the US Marshal shooting of antifa militant Michael Reinoehl in Washington state, after the latter confessed in a Vice News segment to shooting another man he labeled a “fascist” on the streets of Portland. Fixated on the killing of Reinoehl, Chatzivasileiadis put out an international call to anarchists for a “Week of Revenge,” which itself did not materialize in any significant form.

As far as DAC is concerned, the group appears to be gaining momentum, following their call-to-action earlier this year. There remain a few unclaimed attacks on mainland Greece, such as an IED attack on the Goethe Institute in Thessaloniki on May 17th, which we can reasonably expect to appear in a batch-claim by DAC in the near future. Concerning their international aspirations of forming cells and inspiring individual direct action beyond Greece, there has not yet been any indication of their success, but a fertile substrate exists for them in Europe and North America, as well as throughout Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Imprisoned Anarchist and Convicted Bank Robber, Yannis Dimitrakis, Hospitalized after Being Assaulted by a Fellow Inmate (Greece)

Imprisoned anarchist, Yannis Dimitrakis, was transferred to Lamia Hospital in critical condition after being assaulted by a fellow inmate in Domokos Prison, Central Greece. There are suggestions within the anarchist community that the attack was carried out by an Albanian national connected to organized crime in Greece at the direction of the Greek state. Beyond this subjective speculation, little is known about what precipitated the attack against Dimitrakis.

Yannis Dimitrakis occupies an interesting position within the Greek anarchist world, having implied connections to the Conspiracy Cells of Fire, and possibly to those of another Greek urban guerrilla outfit that infamously bombed SKAI News headquarters in Athens in 2018, the Popular Fighters Group (OLA). Dimitrakis has been connected to multiple bank robberies going back to 2007, and has actually written on the topic, as well as others related to urban guerrilla tradecraft.

In one of Greece’s wilder anarchist “expropriations” (aka robberies), Dimitrakis and his accomplice Kostas Sakkas—who had been investigated by Greek counter-terrorism forces as a member of Conspiracy Cells of Fire—dressed up as a patient and doctor and robbed a money delivery van outside of an AHEPA hospital in Thessaloniki. Both were arrested shortly after. Dimitrakis was previously arrested following a series of bank robberies that netted him around €700,000, and was injured during a shootout with police.