Greek fires may be treated as terrorism: developers investigated

Staff and agencies
Monday August 27, 2007
Guardian Unlimited


A Greek prosecutor today ordered an investigation into whether arson attacks, which have been blamed for the worst forest fires in decades, could be considered terrorist acts.

The public order ministry said Dimitris Papangelopoulos, who is responsible for prosecuting terrorism and organised crime, ordered the investigation to determine "whether the crimes of arsonists and of arson attacks on forests carried out in the country during the summer of 2007" could come under Greece's anti-terrorism law.

The investigation would also seek to identify those who were responsible, the statement said.

At least 63 people have died in the fires. A blaze broke out today on the fringes of Athens, burning down a slope of Mount Ymittos and threatening a suburb of the capital.

Four planes, a helicopter and 15 trucks with 45 firefighters attended the fire as it burned through shrubs toward the suburb of Papagou. A pall of smoke hung over central Athens, and the smell of burning permeated the air.

Firefighters and planes from across Europe, backed by soldiers, police, officials and hundreds of thousands of volunteers, joined the fight yesterday against forest fires that have caused death and destruction across Greece over 48 hours.

Italy, France, Germany, Norway and Spain despatched aircraft and commandos to a nation that by last night appeared increasingly unable to combat the fires.

With authorities trying to stop two world heritage sites - Olympia and the fifth century BC theatre of Epidavros - being burned on the Peloponnese, officials did not rule out that hundreds of people could also be missing, having become victims of disorganisation and bungled evacuation plans.

Since the first fires broke out on Friday, the hardest hit area has been the southern peninsula - a popular destination for British holidaymakers - where high temperatures and gale force winds have fanned the flames.

"The damage is terrible, without precedent. We are doing everything we possibly can to help people, to save lives," said the acting interior minister, Spyros Flogaitis.

Over the weekend, television channels depicted harrowing scenes of people burned alive in their cars as they belatedly tried to flee the flames. On Saturday, police said they found the bodies of a mother and her four children who were incinerated when their home near Zacharo in the Peloponnese was engulfed by flames.

Despite the mass evacuation of villages, towns, hotels and resorts - thousands of tourists have been forced to camp on beaches - officials said many of the elderly and infirm were refusing to leave their homes.

"There are death notices everywhere," one local resident said. "Everyone knows someone who has lost a person to the fires."

A senior official in Olympia had expressed concerns over whether the ancient monument, the site of the first Olympic games, would escape the flames. By last night it appeared that attempts to keep the fire at bay had been successful: the fires scorched the yard of the museum, housing a number of famous classical sculptures, such as Hermes by Praxiteles, but planes, helicopters and scores of firefighters halted the advance.

"With self-sacrifice, firefighters fought 'trench battles' to rescue these sensitive and important sites," the public order minister, Byron Polydoras, told reporters.

The foreign intervention came less than a day after the country's prime minister, Costas Karamanlis, declared a state of emergency and appealed to the European Union for help. With an estimated 170 fires on 42 fronts and new ones erupting every hour, he said the situation was simply too much for Greece to cope with alone.

Yesterday, the French leader, Nicolas Sarkozy, offered Mr Karamanlis further aid after it emerged that two French tourists were among the casualties. Greece's foreign minister, Dora Bakoyiannis, said she expected 31 aircraft from 12 countries to arrive today.

Despite the overseas assistance, authorities remained pessimistic that the fires, which had intensified as they raged through six pine forests, would be brought under control soon. "The winds have fallen and that is helpful but this is a situation that cannot be confronted easily," said Nikos Diamantis, a spokesman for the firefighting force.

By last night about 500 conscripts had joined locals, often armed only with buckets and hose pipes, in the west, north and south of the country, as the fires spread to the island of Evia, killing at least six people there.

The tardy intervention of the army added to widespread condemnation of the government's handling of the catastrophe. Many criticised Mr Karamanlis, who this month called a snap election for September 16, of failing to do enough to prevent the outbreak of some 3,000 forest fires that have destroyed large parts of Greece this summer.

The ruling New Democrats have also been denounced for undermining the firefighting force, reorganised by the former Socialist government ahead of the 2004 Athens Olympic games, by handing top jobs to inexperienced political appointees.

"This is nothing short of a national tragedy," said Giorgos Papandreou, Greece's main opposition leader, after visiting the Peloponnese. "The government has a lot to answer for."

Writing in the Sunday Vima, the columnist Rihardos Someritis said: "We had a beautiful country but we are increasingly losing it to fires, rubbish and the illegal buildings [built on land cleared by blazes]."

Yesterday, as fires continued to smoulder in the Hymettus range around Athens, the health ministry appealed to inhabitants to stay indoors and keep their windows shut because of the high density of ash in the air.

Wild fires across Greece are frequently blamed on arsonists working on behalf of developers intent on building on prime forest land. Mr Karamanlis said it was "too much of a coincidence" that so many of the blazes had erupted simultaneously and often in the dead of night. The government yesterday announced bounties of up to €1m (£680,000) for information that could lead to the arrest of arsonists.