Greece releases Royalist officers

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32561, 22 March 1971, Page 15

Greece releases Royalist officers

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) ATHENS, March 21. Greece’s Army-backed Government yesterday announced that it had released from exile 12 high-ranking, retired Royalist officers, banished to remote villages as dangerous to public security and to the regime.

Among those freed were General Sofocles Tzanetis, a former Minister of Public Order, and Air ViceMarshal Petros Mltsakos, a former Chief of Air Force Staff. The Government announced on Wednesday that it had decided to set free about 45 Royalist officers and Right-wing politicians previously banished. It also has promised to free by next month all Leftwing political prisoners detained in exile on Administrative orders.

It said, however, that 60 or 70 of them will be committed to “enforced residence” with their families, in remote villages. The Government is at present holding 300 Communists political prisoner. Ten young lawyers and university students have been arrested in Athens and will face trial by a Military Court on charges of plotting to change the social order and establish a Communist

regime in Greece; they face a maximum penalty of death. Authoritative sources, which disclosed the charges and impending trial, said that the group’s members are being held while police interrogation continues. All are said to belong to an extreme Left-wing organisation, affiliated to a proChinese branch of the outlawed Greek Communist Party. No date has yet been set for the trial, which will probably be held next month. On Friday the arrest was disclosed of another group of about seven to 10 people, in connection with alleged subversive activities. Informed sources said that among those arrested were George Romeos, aged 40, editor-in-chief of the Athens Opposition newspaper “To Vima,” and z a former professor of ancient Greek literature, Dimitrios Maronitis, aged 40. Most of those arrested are believed to belong to the union of the Centre Party.