Greek terrorists on hunger strike

After her arrest on Thursday Panayiota Roupa and her partner Nikos Maziotis, convicted members of terrorist group Revolutionary Struggle, have gone on a hunger strike accusing police authorities of refusing to hand over custody of their 6 year old son to Roupa’s relatives.

Roupa had been on the run since July 2012 when she disappeared with Maziotis while on conditional leave after serving the maximum of 18 months in pre-trial custody.

“I’m starting now a hunger strike in order to give the child now to my mother and sister. As for me, I will remain their enemy until I die and they will never break me,” she said in a message read out by her sister who protested outside Attica police headquarters earlier in the day.

Police said earlier the boy is in “protective custody” at the juvenile protection division, under the supervision of a prosecutor.

She had been sentenced to 50 years in prison in 2013 for participating in the terror group until 2010.

There is also an arrest warrant dating from 2014, concerning, among other crimes, the charge of founding and running a terrorist organisation, manufacturing, supplying and possessing explosives, and carrying out bomb attacks. A separate court last year gave her another 11-year jail term for the explosion of a makeshift bomb outside the Bank of Greece headquarters.