End strike, UK widow begs lawyers

Heather Saunders fears her husband's killers may walk free

The widow of a British military attaché shot dead in Greece has urged Greek lawyers to stop striking over pensions in order to try the alleged murderers.

Brigadier Stephen Saunders was shot dead in June 2000 on his way to work.

Under Greek law, 19 suspected members of the November 17 group arrested in July last year must be tried within 18 months of that date, or go free.

The lawyers should "stick by the case" even if they backed the strike, Heather Saunders told BBC Radio 4's Today.

The suspected members of the radical left-wing group were arrested in connection with a string of offences.

Is this just a ploy to delay the case so that they run out of time and they walk free? Heather Saunders

Their trial got under way in a bunker-like courtroom inside a maximum-security prison in the Greek capital in March, but was derailed by the industrial action.

Mrs Saunders OBE, of Melbury Osmond, Dorset, told Today: "It is funny, from what I have heard, that it is only the defence lawyers.

"Is this just a ploy to delay the case so that they run out of time and they walk free?"

The case was "very, very important", not only for the victims and their families, but also for Greece, she said.

The lawyers could easily have said they would stick by the case, and not walked out.

November 17 has been blamed for killing 23 Greeks and foreigners in a 27-year reign of terror.

It took its name from a bloody student uprising in 1973 during Greece's 1967-to-1974 military rule. The radical leftists' attacks were aimed at overthrowing capitalism.