AP reports from Athens that Greek counter-terrorism police detained nine Turks in Athens on Tuesday in an investigation connected with Turkish leftist militant groups, ahead of a scheduled visit next month by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
A police statement noted the Turkish nationals — eight men and a woman — were detained in the central Athens areas of Neos Kosmos and Kallithea earlier Tuesday.
Police announced the operation was not connected with suspected Islamist terrorism. The detainees are suspected of links with the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, deemed a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
No further details were immediately available while Erdogan’s visit, announced Tuesday, is set for Dec. 7-8.
In 2014, four Turkish men were arrested in Athens on terrorism-related charges in connection with DHKP-C, after a raid on an Athens apartment that uncovered weapons, explosives and detonators. The operation followed the arrests of five Turks and three Greeks over a speedboat carrying arms that was intercepted in the Aegean Sea.
Originally founded in the late 1970s as Dev Sol, the Marxist-Leninist DHKP-C is believed responsible for a series of assassinations and bombings in Turkey, including a 2013 suicide bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in Ankara.
The anti-terror operation which led to the detention of nine people with suspected links to a far-leftist Turkish militant group was conducted by the Greek authorities alone, without any cooperation or information from other states such as Turkey, Citizen Protection Minister Nikos Toskas told the evening newscast of ANT1 TV channel on Tuesday.
“There are no indications that would lead us to believe that these people arrested today were preparing an attack in our country for the visit of [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan,” he stressed, adding that the suspects “are not very cooperative” but that they are “satisfied” with the conditions of detention.
The Minister said police are still examining the apartments where the suspects were living and looking for other safe houses in central Athens.
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Source: int.ert.gr
