Stephen Saunders (military attache)
Encyclopedia
Brigadier
Stephen Saunders (1947 - 8 June 2000), the British military attaché
in Athens
, was killed on 8 June 2000 by motorcycle gunmen who were members of Revolutionary Organization 17 November
(17N). Saunders was buried with a Commonwealth War Graves Commission
headstone in Melbury Osmund churchyard in Dorset, close to where he had previously lived.
on 9 June 2000. The group charged, falsely, that Saunders was an RAF wing commander involved in the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
. In fact he was an army brigadier with broad peacekeeping experience completely unconnected with the Kosovo War
.
17N revealed in a second proclamation dated 11 December 2000, also published in Eleftherotypia, that it had erroneously believed Saunders's embassy-issued Rover was armored. Therefore the killers used a Heckler & Koch G3
assault rifle they had stolen from a Greek police station in August 1988. That gun jammed after one shot, and the killer[s] fired four more shots with a .45 Colt M1911 pistol. Saunders died in the hospital shortly afterward.
Witnesses told police they saw a shorter man behind a taller man, both helmeted, on a white Enduro motorcycle
. Police recovered a stolen green Modenas
Kris 111cc scooter with stolen license plates parked nearby.
The investigation that followed was driven by an unprecedented level of co-operation between Greek and UK Police services, with support from the U.S. FBI and CIA. Scotland Yard
provided training and sent Greek-speaking police officers to compile and restudy the fragmentary evidence compiled since 17N began its operations in 1975. Heather Saunders made a highly effective televised appeal for help in finding the murderers. Family members of 17N victims formed an advocacy group Os Edo (Ως Εδώ -- "Up to Here") that lobbied for a tougher Greek anti-terrorism law, passed as Law 2928/2001.
The lengthy investigation identified suspects for membership in 17N but produced no evidence usable in court. On 29 June 2002, 17N member Savvas Xiros (hitherto unknown to police) was gravely injured when a time bomb he was planting exploded prematurely in Piraeus. He agreed to confess that he had driven the scooter, with fellow member Dimitris Koufodinas carrying the G3. Before the 2003 trial of 19 suspected members of 17N, Xiros retracted his confession. Both he and Koufodinas were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder. An activist against the Greek military junta of 1967–1974 named Alexandros Giotopoulos
, living underground under the pseudonym Mihalis Oikonomou since 1971, was convicted as 17N's leader and thus the moral instigator of the murder, while Savvas's brother Vasilis was convicted as the accomplice who helped preposition the vehicles.
wrote of driving past Saunders's blood-stained car the morning of June 8. He claimed that the reason for his abrupt departure from Greece in August 2000 was the discovery that Greek terrorist group 17 November (17N) had been stalking him instead of Saunders. He quoted the 17N proclamation taking credit for the Saunders murder: “We saw the big spy, but he was in an armored car and we knew that he was armed. So we elected to carry out the sentence on the war criminal Saunders.” (p83) However, the sentence actually reads: "The moment of the operation, bottled up at the traffic light immediately in front, was an American armed mega-spy of the CIA, while about 100 meters back was [shipowner] Vardinogiannis with his armed escort." This proclamation was published in Eleftherotypia on 13 Dec 2000, four months after Kiriakou's departure from Greece. Kiriakou, who described himself as driving far behind Saunders that morning, could not have been the "mega-spy" 17N described. The original proclamation makes clear that 17N was intent on a British target.
Conspiracy theories regarding 17N abound, often spread by adherents of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE)
to discredit potential rivals to the KKE's role as revolutionary vanguard party
. The evidence presented at the 2003 17N trial and 2007 appeal appears to confirm the insistence of 17N members that they were exactly what they claimed to be, revolutionary communists engaged in "armed propaganda."
One of many attempts to implicate the U.S. government as the sponsor of 17N appeared in December 2005, when Kleanthis Grivas published an article in To Proto Thema, a Greek Sunday newspaper. He claimed that "Sheepskin", the Greek version of Gladio, NATO's stay-behind
paramilitary capability during the Cold War
, carried out the assassination of CIA station chief Richard Welch
in Athens in 1975 and also the assassination of Stephen Saunders more than a decade after the Cold War ended. This charge was denied by the US State Department, who responded that "the Greek terrorist organization '17 November' was responsible for both assassinations", and noted that Grivas's central piece of evidence was a disinformation document of Soviet origin (the so-called "Westmoreland Field Manual") which the State department, as well as a Congressional inquiry had dismissed as a Soviet forgery. It should be noted the documents make no specific mention of Greece, November 17, nor Welch. The State Department also highlighted the fact that, in the case of Richard Welch, "Grivas bizarrely accuses the CIA of playing a role in the assassination of one of its own senior officials" as well as the Greek government's statements to the effect that the "stay behind" network had been dismantled in 1988.
has been awarding the Stephen Saunders Award for Good Citizenship to a pupil with outstanding contribution to school life, society
and the support of others. Past recipients include Kevin Saric, Krisztian Goodwin, Yasmin Kotopoulis and Ashira Gailor.
Brigadier
Brigadier is a senior military rank, the meaning of which is somewhat different in different military services. The brigadier rank is generally superior to the rank of colonel, and subordinate to major general....
Stephen Saunders (1947 - 8 June 2000), the British military attaché
Attaché
Attaché is a French term in diplomacy referring to a person who is assigned to the diplomatic or administrative staff of a higher placed person or another service or agency...
in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
, was killed on 8 June 2000 by motorcycle gunmen who were members of Revolutionary Organization 17 November
Revolutionary Organization 17 November
Revolutionary Organization 17 November , was a Marxist urban guerrilla organization formed in 1975 and believed to have been disbanded in 2002 after the arrest and trial of a...
(17N). Saunders was buried with a Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is an intergovernmental organisation of six independent member states whose principal function is to mark, record and maintain the graves, and places of commemoration, of Commonwealth of Nations military service members who died in the two World Wars...
headstone in Melbury Osmund churchyard in Dorset, close to where he had previously lived.
Assassination and investigation
Saunders was attacked and shot dead by two men on a motorcycle while driving through Athens traffic on his way to work at the British Embassy, Athens at 7:48 am. 17N claimed credit for the killing in a proclamation originally dated March 2000 and published in EleftherotypiaEleftherotypia
Eleftherotypia is a daily newspaper published in Athens . It is one of the most widely circulated newspapers in the country. Eleftherotypia also publishes a Sunday edition Kyriakatiki Eleftherotypia . It was first published in 1975. Breaking the trend of Greek press, it was originally owned by its...
on 9 June 2000. The group charged, falsely, that Saunders was an RAF wing commander involved in the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was NATO's military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. The strikes lasted from March 24, 1999 to June 10, 1999...
. In fact he was an army brigadier with broad peacekeeping experience completely unconnected with the Kosovo War
Kosovo War
The term Kosovo War or Kosovo conflict was two sequential, and at times parallel, armed conflicts in Kosovo province, then part of FR Yugoslav Republic of Serbia; from early 1998 to 1999, there was an armed conflict initiated by the ethnic Albanian "Kosovo Liberation Army" , who sought independence...
.
17N revealed in a second proclamation dated 11 December 2000, also published in Eleftherotypia, that it had erroneously believed Saunders's embassy-issued Rover was armored. Therefore the killers used a Heckler & Koch G3
Heckler & Koch G3
The G3 is a 7.62mm battle rifle developed in the 1950s by the German armament manufacturer Heckler & Koch GmbH in collaboration with the Spanish state-owned design and development agency CETME ....
assault rifle they had stolen from a Greek police station in August 1988. That gun jammed after one shot, and the killer[s] fired four more shots with a .45 Colt M1911 pistol. Saunders died in the hospital shortly afterward.
Witnesses told police they saw a shorter man behind a taller man, both helmeted, on a white Enduro motorcycle
Enduro motorcycle
An Enduro motorcycle is a motorcycle specially made for the Enduro sport, with the long travel and medium-hard suspension of a motocross bike conjoined with features such as a headlight and quiet muffler to make the bike street-legal for parts of the track...
. Police recovered a stolen green Modenas
Modenas
Syarikat Motosikal dan Enjin Nasional Sdn. Bhd , or known as Modenas for short is a Malaysian national motorcycle company producing various small motorcycle models below 200 cc targeted for local market and export...
Kris 111cc scooter with stolen license plates parked nearby.
The investigation that followed was driven by an unprecedented level of co-operation between Greek and UK Police services, with support from the U.S. FBI and CIA. Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
provided training and sent Greek-speaking police officers to compile and restudy the fragmentary evidence compiled since 17N began its operations in 1975. Heather Saunders made a highly effective televised appeal for help in finding the murderers. Family members of 17N victims formed an advocacy group Os Edo (Ως Εδώ -- "Up to Here") that lobbied for a tougher Greek anti-terrorism law, passed as Law 2928/2001.
The lengthy investigation identified suspects for membership in 17N but produced no evidence usable in court. On 29 June 2002, 17N member Savvas Xiros (hitherto unknown to police) was gravely injured when a time bomb he was planting exploded prematurely in Piraeus. He agreed to confess that he had driven the scooter, with fellow member Dimitris Koufodinas carrying the G3. Before the 2003 trial of 19 suspected members of 17N, Xiros retracted his confession. Both he and Koufodinas were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder. An activist against the Greek military junta of 1967–1974 named Alexandros Giotopoulos
Alexandros Giotopoulos
Alexandros Giotopoulos is serving a sentence of life imprisonment, having been found guilty in 2003 of leading the Marxist Greek terrorist group November 17th ....
, living underground under the pseudonym Mihalis Oikonomou since 1971, was convicted as 17N's leader and thus the moral instigator of the murder, while Savvas's brother Vasilis was convicted as the accomplice who helped preposition the vehicles.
Further claims
In his 2009 memoir "Reluctant Spy" (Bantam), former CIA officer John KiriakouJohn Kiriakou
John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer, commentator, and author notable as the first official within the U.S. government to openly admit to the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique....
wrote of driving past Saunders's blood-stained car the morning of June 8. He claimed that the reason for his abrupt departure from Greece in August 2000 was the discovery that Greek terrorist group 17 November (17N) had been stalking him instead of Saunders. He quoted the 17N proclamation taking credit for the Saunders murder: “We saw the big spy, but he was in an armored car and we knew that he was armed. So we elected to carry out the sentence on the war criminal Saunders.” (p83) However, the sentence actually reads: "The moment of the operation, bottled up at the traffic light immediately in front, was an American armed mega-spy of the CIA, while about 100 meters back was [shipowner] Vardinogiannis with his armed escort." This proclamation was published in Eleftherotypia on 13 Dec 2000, four months after Kiriakou's departure from Greece. Kiriakou, who described himself as driving far behind Saunders that morning, could not have been the "mega-spy" 17N described. The original proclamation makes clear that 17N was intent on a British target.
Conspiracy theories regarding 17N abound, often spread by adherents of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE)
Communist Party of Greece
Founded in 1918, the Communist Party of Greece , better known by its acronym, ΚΚΕ , is the oldest party on the Greek political scene.- Foundation :...
to discredit potential rivals to the KKE's role as revolutionary vanguard party
Vanguard party
A vanguard party is a political party at the forefront of a mass action, movement, or revolution. The idea of a vanguard party has its origins in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
. The evidence presented at the 2003 17N trial and 2007 appeal appears to confirm the insistence of 17N members that they were exactly what they claimed to be, revolutionary communists engaged in "armed propaganda."
One of many attempts to implicate the U.S. government as the sponsor of 17N appeared in December 2005, when Kleanthis Grivas published an article in To Proto Thema, a Greek Sunday newspaper. He claimed that "Sheepskin", the Greek version of Gladio, NATO's stay-behind
Stay-behind
In a stay-behind operation, a country places secret operatives or organisations in its own territory, for use in the event that the territory is overrun by an enemy. If this occurs, the operatives would then form the basis of a resistance movement, or would act as spies from behind enemy lines...
paramilitary capability during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, carried out the assassination of CIA station chief Richard Welch
Richard Welch
Richard Skeffington Welch , a Harvard-educated classicist, was a CIA Station Chief killed by the radical Marxist organization Revolutionary Organization 17 November .-Early life and CIA career:...
in Athens in 1975 and also the assassination of Stephen Saunders more than a decade after the Cold War ended. This charge was denied by the US State Department, who responded that "the Greek terrorist organization '17 November' was responsible for both assassinations", and noted that Grivas's central piece of evidence was a disinformation document of Soviet origin (the so-called "Westmoreland Field Manual") which the State department, as well as a Congressional inquiry had dismissed as a Soviet forgery. It should be noted the documents make no specific mention of Greece, November 17, nor Welch. The State Department also highlighted the fact that, in the case of Richard Welch, "Grivas bizarrely accuses the CIA of playing a role in the assassination of one of its own senior officials" as well as the Greek government's statements to the effect that the "stay behind" network had been dismantled in 1988.
Legacy
Since 2001 St. Catherine’s British Embassy School in AthensAthens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
has been awarding the Stephen Saunders Award for Good Citizenship to a pupil with outstanding contribution to school life, society
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
and the support of others. Past recipients include Kevin Saric, Krisztian Goodwin, Yasmin Kotopoulis and Ashira Gailor.
See also
- Greece – United Kingdom relations