Revolutionary Organization 17 November (, Epanastatiki Organosi dekaefta Noemvri), also known as 17N or the 17 November Group, was a Greek Marxist–Leninist urban guerrilla organization. Formed in 1975 and led by Alexandros Giotopoulos, 17N conducted an extensive urban guerrilla campaign of left-wing violence against the Greek state, banks, and businesses. The organization committed 103 known armed robberies, assassinations, and bombing attacks, during which 23 people were killed. The organization is known for targeting American, British and other foreign diplomats and military personnel, particularly in retribution against the United States for its support of the coup d'état and the dictatorship known as the Regime of the Colonels. Their demands have included the removal of American military bases in Greece, the removal of Turkish military forces from Northern Cyprus and the withdrawal of Greece from NATO and the European Union. The Encyclopedia of Terrorism describes them as "a durable, lethal and successful group" who evaded authorities for over 25 years.

Attacks

17N's first attack, on 23 December 1975, was against the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Athens, Richard Welch. Welch was gunned down outside his residence by three assailants, in front of his wife and driver. 17N's repeated claims of responsibility were ignored until 25 December 1976, when it subsequently murdered the former Intelligence Chief of the Greek security police, Evangelos Mallios, convicted of torturing political prisoners during the dictatorship, and left "scattered leaflets" at the scene claiming responsibility for the 1975 Welch murder. 17N used two M1911 pistols in these killings. After their first attack against the CIA station chief, the group tried to get mainstream newspapers to publish their manifesto. Their first proclamation, claiming the murder of Richard Welch, was first sent to Libération in Paris, France. It was given to the publisher of Libération via the offices of Jean-Paul Sartre. One of their demands was the removal of US military bases from Greece. When the Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou renewed the US base agreement, 17N responded to the perceived betrayal by attempting to assassinate US Master Sergeant Robert Judd, firing five rounds at him while his car was stopped in traffic. They issued a communique after the attack: "American Imperialists, The people do not want you! Take your bases and go!" Police suspected the group of using a stolen anti-armor rocket to attack a downtown branch of the American Citibank in April 1998. The attack caused damage but no injuries, as the warhead did not explode. The rocket was fired by remote control from a private car parked outside the bank on Drossopoulou Street in the downtown district of Kypseli. A British defence attaché, Brigadier Stephen Saunders, was shot and killed on 8 June 2000 by two men on motorbikes as he drove to work in Kifissia, Athens.

Victims

17N's known murdered (23) and injured victims include:

Trial

The trial of 19 individuals suspected of involvement with 17N commenced in Athens on 3 March 2003, with Christos Lambrou serving as the lead prosecutor for the Greek state. Because of the 20-year statute of limitations, crimes committed before 1984 (such as the killing of the CIA station chief) could not be tried by the court. On 8 December, fifteen of the accused, including Giotopoulos and Koufontinas, were found guilty; another four defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence. The convicted members were sentenced on 17 December 2003. All those convicted defendants appealed. On 3 May 2007, the convictions were upheld.

Prison

In early January 2014, Christodoulos Xyros, one of the imprisoned leaders of the organization, escaped from prison. On 6 January, he failed to report to the police after leaving prison under the condition to report to the police every day, which he did six times in 18 months. He was taken into custody while riding a bicycle in the southern suburb of Anavyssos in early January 2015. In 2018 the group's alleged hitman, Dimitris Koufontinas, was moved from Korydallos Prison to a low security agricultural facility after the prison council approved his parole request, citing exemplary behaviour.

2021 hunger strike

On 8 January 2021, at 63 years of age, Koufontinas entered a hunger strike with the demand of transfer to Korydallos Prison after being sent to a high security prison in Domokos. On 22 February whilst in intensive care at Lamia Hospital Koufontinas started to reject water and medical care, forcibly removing a catheter from his arm before the courts issued an order to force feed the prisoner a few days later, a practice condemned by many, including a Greek union of doctors, as torture. It was reported that on 5 March, Koufontinas had to be resuscitated due to kidney failure. Koufontinas ended his hunger strike on 14 March after 65 days, despite his demands not being met. Street demonstrations were held in multiple cities across Greece as well as attacks against property has been claimed in support of Koufontinas, including a demonstration outside of president Katerina Sakellaropoulou's home and vandalism of buildings belonging to Action 24 TV station and the office of Education Minister Niki Kerameus with paint and projectiles by multiple groups of protesters. Other left-wing activists have shown support for Koufontinas, including Miguel Urbán, a co-founder of Podemos, and political filmmaker Costa-Gavras.

Theories

Some Greek officials considered Revolutionary Struggle (EA), the group that fired a Chinese-made RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. Embassy in Athens in January 2007, to be a spin-off of 17N. However, three self-admitted EA members arrested in April 2010 claimed that they were anarchists—a designation 17N rejected in its proclamations. For many years, leading politicians of the right-wing New Democracy party, as well as the conservative press, falsely claimed that Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou was the mastermind behind 17N. Virginia Tsouderou, who became Deputy Foreign Minister in the Kyriakos Mitsotakis government, and journalist Giorgos Karatzaferis (later the founder and leader of a right-wing party, LAOS) claimed that terrorism in Greece was controlled by Papandreist officers of Hellenic National Intelligence Service (the Greek security and intelligence service), and named Kostas Tsimas (the head of EYP) and Colonel Alexakis as two of the supposed controllers of 17N. However, after 17N members were arrested, the only connection between the terrorist organization and PASOK was the fact that Dimitris Koufontinas was a member of PAMK (Panellinia Agonistiki Mathitiki Kinisi, Panhellenic Militant Pupil's Movement), the PASOK militant high school students organization, and had been an admirer of Andreas Papandreou in his late teens. Other writers have also claimed that 17N may have been a tool of foreign secret services. In December 2005, Kleanthis Grivas published an article in To Proto Thema, a Greek Sunday newspaper, in which he accused "Sheepskin", the Greek branch of Gladio, NATO's stay-behind paramilitary organization during the Cold War, of the 1975 assassination of Welch as well as of the 2000 assassination of Saunders. This was denied by the US State Department, which responded that "the Greek terrorist organization '17 November' was responsible for both assassinations", and asserted that Grivas' central piece of evidence had been the Westmoreland Field Manual, which the State Department as well as a Congressional inquiry, had dismissed as a Soviet forgery. 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.