ATHENS: The secrecy that has kept one of Europe’s deadliest terrorist groups alive for the past 27 years was finally blown away on Thursday as three men, including one of the killers of Brigadier Stephen Saunders, the British defence attache gunned down in Athens, admitted they were members of November 17, Greece’s notorious urban guerrilla gang.

The extraordinary breakthrough came as police named an urbane, French-born professor as the founder and spiritual father of the radical leftist organisation.

The identification of Alexandros Giotopoulos, a 63-year-old economist and son of a renowned Trotskyist as November 17’s alleged leader, may well explain why the gang reputedly elected to send its manifesto to the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre in 1977 — two years after it first appeared following the assassination of Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Greece.

Speaking to the nation in a televised address, the Greek police chief, Fotis Nassiakos, said that Vasillis Xeros, a 30-year-old mechanic from Salonika, had confessed to “being present” at the drive-by shooting of Brig Saunders on June 8, 2000. Described as an expert with machines, the mechanic’s comrade in arms at the time is believed to have been his brother Savvas, an icon painter whose part in a botched bomb attack in Pireaus 20 days ago gave police their first credible lead to November 17. It was unclear, however, which of the brothers had pulled the trigger.

November 17, which is named after the day a student uprising was brutally crushed by the Greek junta in 1973, has claimed credit for 23 murders and hundreds of attacks against US, Greek, Turkish and, more recently, EU targets. The role of the Xeros children, whose father is a retired Orthodox priest, in the terrorist organisation’s operation would account for its impenetrability, insiders said.

Looking visibly shocked by the pace of the revelations, Mr Nassiakos said the family’s oldest sibling, Christo doulos, had also given a detailed account of his role in a multitude of November 17 killings, bombing, and robberies.

A musical instrument maker who lives on the Aegean island of Ikaria, the burly 44-year-old allegedly admitted he had “been present” in almost every major attack of November 17 until the early 90s when a new generation, embodied by his younger brothers, took over. But it was the uncovering of Alexandros Giotopoulos, the organisation’s spiritual leader, that the police chief described as “especially significant”.

Since moving to Greece from Paris upon the collapse of the Greek junta in 1974, Giotopoulos had dispensed of his real identity and posed as Michel, or Michalis Economou, a maths professor who lived with his French wife, Marie Therese Paneaux, in relative obscurity in Athens.

The academic — whom authorities have long believed was connected to the group but were unable to arrest because of lack of evidence — was seized on Wednesday from his remote island home on Lispi in a dramatic raid by members of the anti-terrorist squad. He was about to board a hydrofoil in an apparent bid to escape to Turkey when the squad swooped on the island in a firefighters’ helicopter.

“From our investigations we knew that a certain ‘Lambros’, a man aged between 55 and 60, was probably the writer of the group’s proclamations. We have identified him with Alexandros Giotopoulos,” said Mr Nassiakos.

The police chief said that fingerprints found in one of two November 17 safe-houses authorities had been led to by the injured Savvas Xeros matched those of Giotopoulos which had been on police records following a conviction in the 70s. He said the white-haired professor had admitted to him personally that he was not Economou but Alexandros Gioto poulos. Last night, as authorities continued the hunt for his French wife, insiders described the mild-mannered intellectual as the “motor” that had kept November 17 going. Although as many as four people, including a woman, are believed to have initially founded the group, it is Giotopoulos who is thought to have been its mastermind for more than a decade.

“He and Marie Therese spent months on Lispi every year,” said Michalis Mangos, leader of the 500-strong island community. “He was always calm and low-key and enjoyed nothing more than going out on a caique with the local fishermen. It was only lately that I noticed something was bothering him, that he was behaving like a wild cat, but nobody here would ever have thought he was the leader of November 17.”

But it appeared on Friday that Giotopoulos, a renowned womaniser, may have sensed the end was near. This week neighbours in Athens, where he has lived with his wife for the past nine years, reported seeing the couple “frantically throwing away boxes of papers”.

Born in Paris in 1939 and the holder of both French and Greek citizenships, Greek authorities believe he discarded his real identity in the early 70s at about the time he almost certainly conceived of November 17.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.