Greek blogger shot down in Athens

Sokratis Giolias, 37, was shot down before his home in Athens after men possibly dressed in police uniforms rang his bell and said his car had been robbed. They shot 16 bullets of the 19 mm caliber at him.

Giolias run the most popular blog and one of the most visited websites of Greece, Troktiko, which mixed frivolity with wide spectrum journalism, including, it seems, investigative journalism. He may have stepped on the wrong toe of someone with very bad temper and enough power. Who exactly? That I don't know yet.

While the police accuses the mysterious leftist armed group "The Revolutionary Sect" (variously called in the media "Sect of Revolutionaries" or "Rebel Sect"), which possibly means Revolutionary Struggle, which sent a parcel-bomb to the Greek Minister of Interior recently, killing one of his aides. I find this association strange to say the least, as the modus operandi is clearly different, there are reports that the men were dressed in police uniforms and, after hours of reading an automatically translated version of the blog, I get the conclusion the main targets of his reports seem to be the establishment, including the police, wealthy tax evaders, fire arsonists and EU dictator Joao Barroso, as well as fascist Turkish groups like the Grey Wolves.

[Update: a frequent poster at the blog, Anagnostis, says that while "the Sect" had threatened certain journalists, Giolias' name was not in their list. He/she adds other reasons not to believe in the official version].

I suspect that the Greek police is trying to cover up the institutional murder of a free reporter who had become a problem for them. But we'll see because it's not like we can be deceived forever, right?

Most intriguing is this announcement repeatedly placed in the blog yesterday which reads (according to Google translator):

Do not miss tomorrow troktiko

Tomorrow we will see how the state of the relationship between security forces and entrepreneur! With photos and documents

From what I could gather from the media, he was about to publish an investigative report on corruption, possibly those links between the police forces and the capitalists that we can understand from the babbling translation provided by Google.

Mainstream media references: Al Jazeera, BBC, Reuters, New Europe.


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Update (Jul 23): Antimperialista blog[es] reports that all documents and personal objects of Sokratis Giolias have been confiscated by police on the pretext of doing a throughout investigation. That way the investigation on police corruption he was about to publish will never see the light.

It also clarifies that the mysterious "Revolutionary Sect" is believed to be different from other armed groups and a cover up for police and fascist murderous activities.

The blog also links to Il Manifesto newspaper[it], which wonders if Greece is falling again into the Lead Years, name by which are known the period of the 1970s and 1980s that, specially in Italy but also in other areas of Europe, characterized by state terrorism against revolutionaries and complex manipulations leading to farce-trials.