The Greek Colonels and their Seven Years of Terror and Violence: An Abnormal Rise, An Unprecedented Fall

 

In modern discussions of state terror and organized systems of violence and torture, several key cases are continually discussed – the disappearances and torture in Argentina,[1] the forced relocations and apartheid of South Africa,[2] the death squads of Columbia,[3] the ethnic cleansing of the Balkans.[4] These cases are remembered for myriad reasons: for the exceptional violence and cruelty that was perpetrated on average citizens by (or with the knowledge and support of) the state; for the complex confluence of events that brought these regimes to power and the equally multifaceted set that brought them down; and for the struggles endured and the strategies used to deal with the rebuilding process once these systems had fallen, either through truth commissions, legal proceedings, or denial.

Absent from this list of frequent discussion, though, is the Greek case of the Colonels, a brutal military regime that ruled the country in the late 60s and early 70s. This case shares many of the same characteristics as the aforementioned not only in terms of what happened, but what happened afterwards. For the former, the Greek regime subjected the population to harsh rule by military dictators and implemented a brutal system of terror, torture, and oppression that relied on killings, disappearances, and sadistic techniques of physical and psychological torture to survive.  For the latter, after the regime fell a hesitant new government grappled with the questions of how best to rebuild the country – through placation or punishment, truth or justice for the perpetrators of the violence.

Priscilla Hayner says in her book on truth commissions that the goals of said entities are to expose, clarify, and acknowledge the abuses of the past, contribute to justice and accountability, and promote reconciliation and peace while serving the needs of the victims.[5]  Countries use these commissions to start the healing process after a period of pronounced suffering and they typically paint a broad, detailed picture of what happened, but are unable to exact legal penalties on the higher-ranking officials, usually ensnaring only the lower level perpetrators.

The Greek case dealt with all of these goals, to varying degrees of success, and it imposed harsh penalties on all ranks of the perpetrators, from the political heads in high office to the henchmen on the ground, and it did so without the benefit of a truth commission, a full ten years before the first major one of those appeared.[6]  As Hayner points out in her book, the problems and hard questions that face these countries on the cusp of rebuilding –the same ones modern truth commissions seek to address and improve -- seem to be universal and, she adds,  “there is much to be learned from past exercises that might improve the models of the future.”[7] For these reasons, then – the similarity to other frequently used cases of study and Greece’s success in rebuilding the country without a truth commission -- this case must be added to the modernn discourse on state terror and violence; it is a history that simply cannot afford to be forgotten.

Before we can examine how they handled the aftermath, though, we must first look at the people and events that make up this puzzle.  In the following sections we will first look at the composition of the Greek regime, how it was formed, and how it rose to power. We will see how a dozen junior officers, with an intense detestation for communists stemming from the country’s civil war, were able to take control of the country and rule it for seven years with little domestic support, but a critical helping hand from the United States. Then we will move onto an examination of the actual system of terror and torture they implemented on Greek civilians. This section will look at what techniques were used and to what ends, who was targeted for capture and abuse, and what were the regime’s overall goals, among other things.

Only after looking at these core parts can we analyze the system as a whole and discuss the effectiveness with which the subsequent Greek government dealt with the regime’s fall. Here we will examine the purges of ex-regime members from the military and state, look at the charges laid on them and the ensuing trials, and discuss their overall impact, both on Greek society and on the international community. Then it will become apparent this case shares parallels with many better-known cases and can still offer important lessons to today’s societies. The Greeks’ ability to overcome a system of repression that was every bit as destructive as those found elsewhere and still deal with it quickly, strongly, and succinctly, punishing the architects of terror without tearing the country apart or falling victim to another coup, shows how truly remarkable this case is.

 

The Greek Case: The Rise, Rule, and Repercussions of the Colonels

April 21, 1967 was a Friday. The end of the workweek, the start of another weekend in Greece, one that, on the surface, looked like any other. Yet before its conclusion this day would take on more symbolic and historical importance as it would mark the end of democracy in its birthplace and would signal the beginning of a rather relentless era of repression, torture, and dictatorial control that would span the next seven years.

This particular Friday marked the beginning of the reign of the Greek Colonels, a military regime that deserves to be remembered as much for its abnormally uneventful rise to power as its rather surprising fall from grace. This regime, comprised of twelve low level officers from the right wing of the military yet run primarily by one man, bore many of the hallmarks of typical authoritarian regimes and employed many of their standard tactics – a right wing ideology that vowed to stop the country from diving into the depths of communism and rescue its Western, Christian ideals; a strong, brutal military police force that carried out a relentless system of oppression and terror; a censorship of the liberal and international press and a cooption of state media as propaganda mills; and a largely unapologetic group of perpetrators once the regime had fallen and democracy was restored.

It would use, with few exceptions, the textbook methods of state terror and torture – kidnappings, beatings, starvation, sleep deprivation, sexual abuse, psychological torture, etc. – it would target the usual victims – liberal politicians, dissenters, intellectuals, artists, students – and at the end of the reign the offenders would largely meet the same fate as most perpetrators of state terror – one of uneven punishment. Yet the singularities in each area – the ease with which they came to power, the usage of falanga as the primary method of torture, the attacks on members of the military, both reluctant participants and dissenting members of separate branches, the rather shortsighted and poor choice of people to forcibly exile, the rather startling fate of the rulers of the regime – these all make this largely forgotten case unique and worth remembering. For as the former head of the Greek National Security Service said in his trial in 1975, “There have been other coups in the past, but no one behaved like this.”[8]

 

A Brief History: The Rise of the Colonels

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. For anyone looking at the progress Greece had made since World War II and since the civil war that wracked the country from 1946-1949, it seemed like the nation was beginning to find its legs again after two severe knockdowns in as many decades.  World War II had left the country with a shattered economy, a political system that was in shambles, and a fractured sense of pride and nationalism.[9]

When the Germans had occupied Greece in the early 1940s it drove the Greek leadership – King George and his prime minister – along with the remnants of the military out of the country.[10] As Constantine Danopoulous says in his book, “The resulting military vacuum in Greece was successfully filled by the communists who...were able to maintain a small but highly disciplined underground network that organized an impressive guerrilla campaign against the occupation forces.”[11]

Once liberation from the Germans was achieved in 1944, the communist resistance forces controlled most of the country and were extremely leery of the non-communist liberators and their attempts to control the country.[12]  This tension led to the civil war, which pitted the liberal, anti-monarchy communists against the conservative nationalists and the military. The fighting forced the nationalists to look for outside help to quell the uprising and reassert control over the population, help they found in the form of the US and the Truman Doctrine.[13]

With its massive amounts of military and economic aid, the results of Truman’s declaration were many – the left was completely defeated and the war ended within two years;[14] the military achieved a high level of autonomy and independence from civilian or state authority for the first time;[15] there was an intense distrust and antagonism towards communism by members of the military;[16] and military officers who held these views – that royalists were anti-communists while republicans were communist supporters – began getting positions with decision-making power in the central government thanks to their often, but not always, unofficial stamp of approval by the US government.[17]

The US interceded in Greece to gain a foothold in the country through the military, a move that was seen as crucial in their Cold War fight against communism and was accomplished with their large shipments of financial and military aid.[18] Danopoulous sums up the Western strategy well with the following:

 

“The highly factionalized political parties of Greece discomforted the Americans and their NATO allies who wanted to see the country’s instability yield to an effective and stable regime. The Western world desired a homogenous, well-trained and fiercely anti-communist Greek military institution that could preserve stability and the principles of democracy.”[19]

 

Thanks to their interventions, they got exactly that -- with key personnel highly dependent on US support and responsive to their suggestions, the US had earned (or bought) allies at the highest levels of leadership.[20] To round out the range of their influence, from 1950-69 the US or NATO (which also had a highly Western, “dogmatically anti-communist” curriculum)[21] trained approximately 11,230 officers from the armed forces. Compare this to the roughly 11,000 men total in the Greek officers corps to that point[22] and you get an idea of how expansive the US’ influence was.

So while these US-sponsored seeds of potential danger were starting to work themselves into the structure of government and hint at unsettling things to come, on the surface things looked good. In the two decades after the civil war leading up to the 1967 coup, the country settled down. There was little unrest, there was a stable government for seven years under the helm of Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis,[23] there were free elections, and the monarchy remained intact and rather in the background, as did the military.

George Papandreou, founder and leader of the leftist and reform-minded Center Union Party, was elected in 1963 and 1965 before resigning later that year over a dispute with the new king, Constantine II, and the latter’s interference with Papandreou’s appointments to his Cabinet and other government posts.[24]  But rather than signal a shift towards an iron-fisted monarchy, the interim government installed by the king was wildly inefficient and unpopular amongst politicians and citizens alike.[25] In the face of growing verbal opposition, Constantine II finally acquiesced and declared new democratic elections to be held on May 28, 1967, with it appearing almost certain Papandreou would return to power.[26]

This realization spurred the aforementioned latent seeds of danger into action. The military feared that if the Center Union Party and Papandreou returned to power, the country would become more leftist and possibly call for a curtailing of the power of the military, the monarchy, or both.[27] And so a group of twelve junior officers – colonels, lieutenant colonels and lieutenant generals -- met and decided the way to save their country from the dangerous path they saw it on was a military takeover, one which was to take place before the elections. In fact, it happened a mere 24 hours after the meeting -- on April 21, 1967.

The group that perpetrated the coup is remarkable almost as much for its composition as it is for the surprising ease with which they captured and consolidated their reign. The core of the group consisted of three men who inspired the name the reign came to be known by, the Greek Colonels: Colonel George Papadopoulos, Colonel Nicolaos Makarezos, and Brigadier Stylianos Pattakos.  The men immediately seized a range of government positions – Papadopoulos became Prime Minister, Makarezos took over the economic-minded Ministry of Coordination, and Pattakos took over the Minister of the Interior[28] – but Papadopoulos would shortly emerge as their figure head, eventually holding the posts of President, Prime Minister, Defense Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regent, and for a short time Minister of Education.[29] 

Unlike most other military takeovers, this group consisted solely of junior officers, not the senior level commanders like generals we are used to seeing in places such as Argentina, Chile, and Cuba.  Disputes remain about how much knowledge of the coup there was in the senior ranks before the 21st, but the fact it was carried out and continued to be led by these lower level officers is rather unique in its own right and shows a surprising acquiescence to what would normally be viewed as incredible insubordination.[30]

Yet the colonels faced little to no resistance from within the military and the coup was carried out and accepted quite easily. This can partially be attributed to the fact that as long as these military men could give themselves raises and secure their jobs, they were content to let the lower level officers run things.[31] Terence Roehrig says in his book the men  “received many benefits including higher salaries, loans and improved promotion possibilities” and that “continued growth in the economy also helped to dampen opposition to the regime.”[32]

The other reason the regime was able to diminish resistance so well was because of the purges they carried out on the military and state employees.  For the former, uncooperative officers were forced to retire and kept under surveillance while 800 new positions were created for lower ranking officials to rise into.[33]

As for uncooperative members of the state and civil sectors, the purge was more expansive than the previous one on the military, yet equally ambiguous. Civil servants lost their tenure, professors and associate professors were fired,[34] as were judges, prosecutors, and several leaders of the church, including the Archbishop, for expressing or acting contrary to the state.[35]

Thus to a large extent it was a bloodless coup, both in execution and maintenance.[36]  The coup encountered little popular resistance in the cities[37] and happened so rapidly and seamlessly that a majority of people waking up on April 22 didn’t realize they had slept through the transition from democracy to dictatorship.[38]

However, this ease of ascension does not imply a high level of popular support. As Amnesty says in their Torture Report on the regime:

 

“They were able to control the institutions of civil society – the church, schools, universities, local governments, professional and social organizations, etc. – by means of informers and appointees, but they were not able to persuade and convince members of these social institutions of the legitimacy of their rule. At most the Junta could convince the populace only of the reality of U.S. support for their rule, which in turn helped create a sense that organized resistance on any substantial scale would be futile.”[39]

 

Those obstacles notwithstanding, the regime began to strategize how to consolidate its power. Now that they had seized it, their mission turned towards preserving it, and their efforts to do so ushered in an unpleasant, if not historically uncommon, chapter in modern Greek history.

 

The Torturous Reign: The Terror of the ESA

When the colonels seized power, they had no clear ideology that explained their reasons or would guide them in the future.[40] Instead, they had a messianic muddle of the typical elements military regimes have historically called on – a fear of the spread of communism,[41] anti-Western, anti-Christian ideals, corruption, etc. – that the regime leaders often bounced between. Papadopoulos’ explanation of the regime’s goals in his 1975 trial is illustrative of this as he samples from several of the above at once: “Democracy was suffocated by the fumes of corrupt parliamentism. All state institutions were discredited. And the civil war to which we were unavoidable being dragged would have resulted in the certain prevalence of communism, with new massacres.”[42]

Constantine Kollias, one-time prime minister of the regime, called the previous government a phavlokratia or “corruptocracy”[43] that had created “a climate of anarchy and chaos, of hatred and division” that had led them “to the brink of national catastrophe. There remained no other means of salvation than the intervention of our army.”[44]

Roehrig says in his book, “The junta leaders believed the civilian politicians who ran the government and democracy were inefficient, corrupt, and prone to squabbling”[45] and that “their leadership was necessary to restore order and discipline to the system.”[46]

Some spoke of saving the values of “Helleno-Christian Civilization;”[47] Pattakos said the goal was “to fashion a New Man” who “must have the strength to do Absolute Good;”[48] Speaking of the country as a whole Papadopoulos said “we have here a sick man…on the operating table and if the surgeon does not strap him down…there is a possibility [that] instead of the operation giving him the restoration of his health, it may lead to his death.”[49] He also referred to “diseased cells” proliferating in the country[50] while Pattakos said, “In Greece we have right people and wrong people. All those who are against the country are Communists.”[51]

The regime continued this chameleonic pattern, shifting the official goals depending on what suited them best at the time. Yet this seeming confusion over what the official party line was did not affect the regime’s idea of who was the enemy – that distinction was bestowed upon virtually everyone not completely supportive of the regime, whether they were in a military uniform or not. In a typically paranoiac and ambiguous fashion, the government went after “anyone suspected of being an opponent or potential opponent of the regime.”[52]

The system of torture the junta implemented had two phases in terms of its intent – initially torture was used to obtain information about resistance groups on order to squash any uprisings before they happened.[53] After the regime’s power was consolidated and stabilized it was used chiefly to terrorize the population, intimidating them into quiet submission.[54] As Amnesty International notes in their Report on Torture, “the policy of the military regime was first to survive, then to survive handsomely.”[55]

To do so the regime first made a declaration immediately upon seizing power that eliminated a range of civil liberties, including the following:

 

“It authorized arrest and preventive detention without time limit; it precluded bail in the case of political offenses; it established trial by extraordinary tribunals or courts-martial; it forbade public or private assemblies; it abolished trade unions and declared strikes illegal; it authorized searches in private houses or public buildings, by day or night, without restriction; it established censorship of broadcasts by radio or television; it gave power to courts-martial to try all types of crime, including political offenses and offenses by the press, whether or not they were directed against the military authorities.”[56]

 

In addition to eradicating these civil rights, the initial wave after the coup involved the arrest and deportations of thousands of people,[57] with the total mushrooming to roughly 6,000 people held in detention camps after only a few months.[58] Members of the left were obvious targets for the junta and initially they sustained the heaviest blows,[59] revealing a disturbing tendency of the regime -- the number of people and the intensity of their torture intensified as you moved from right to left in terms of political views.[60] Often these were the most intelligent and articulate Greeks, including conservative and centrist politicians,[61] who thanks to their intimate understanding of Western democratic institutions became the most effective lobbyists against the regime.[62] During this phase the rule of the torturers was to avoid leaving visible marks on the victims, or to keep them in custody and out of public view until the marks had faded.[63]

The main perpetrators of the violence throughout the reign of the junta were the military police, the Elliniki Stratiotiki Astynomia (ESA), a spinoff of the Special Interrogation Section in Athens, the Eidikon Anakritikon Tmima (EAT).[64]  As John Conroy says in his book, members of the ESA were told they would be “the cornerstone of the regime, the guardians of the nation, and as such could do whatever they wanted.”[65]

The man in charge here was Major Theodoros Theofiloyannakos, who under the direction and guidance of his mentor, Brigadier-General Dimitrios Ioannidis (who himself visited the facility twice a week, oversaw training, and allegedly inspired a majority of the policies),[66] turned the EAT/ESA into an efficient machine that by the end of 1968 had virtually unchecked powers of arrest, detention, and interrogation.[67] The total number of members varies thanks to the junta’s destruction of ESA files and the resultant dependence on survivor testimony, but probably ranges from 400 to 600 at any one time.[68] The ESA employed shadowy techniques of surveillance and arrest, with soldiers dressed in disguise watching people in theatres, nightclubs, and other public places, [69] usually arresting them at night.[70]

Once victims were in custody the ESA employed a range of techniques (testimonies from the trials in 1975 document 22 different methods)[71] including familiar standards seen many times before -- mock executions, the use of extreme noise or bright lights, beatings, threats – and more exotic methods such as headscrews (called “iron wreaths”)[72] and falanga (ten lashes equaled ten “pistachios”)[73]. If there was an official method of the regime it was this latter, falanga -- the beating of the soles of the feet -- that was the first form of torture used in almost every case.[74]

The case of Yiannis Leloudas, an archaeologist and poet, describes this favored method in detail:

 

“The prisoner is made to lie on his back, and tied or held in that position, while he is being beaten on the soles of his feet by means of an iron or wooden rod for a period of time depending on his physical and moral resistance, the torturer or torturers’ ability to stand the fatigue caused by his job, the importance of the questions asked, and the number of prisoners waiting to be treated. It is administered on shod feet, as shoes prevent the feet from being swollen to insensitivity or burst open after the first five or so minutes…The prisoner [is made to] stand up from time to time and made to walk or jump around so that the muscles will work.”[75]

 

The ordeal of actress Katerina Arseni also involves this favored method in addition to the disorienting psychological stresses they often inflicted on top of the physical torture:

 

“They led me to the ‘taratsa.’ This is a room like an old washing shed. There [was] a machine that makes the noise resembling the motor of a motorcycle to cover the screaming. [There is also] a large cauldron that they also hit to cover the screams…it was almost completely dark. One of them began to beat me in the falanga style. They ripped my clothing off, stepped on my stomach, held my throat as if to strangle me, and lit matches near my eyes. He continuously asked me for names. The cauldron was gonged to cover my screams after the motorcycle machine was already on. In the meantime the falanga continued.”[76]

 

She also describes people subjected to electric shock so frequently that after a certain point “it was no longer necessary to touch the wires to the body because the body was so conditioned that the mere suggestion of electric shock would produce the spasm. This was done surrounded by laughing ‘doctors.’”[77]

Petros Gavalas, a priest, tells of the humiliation and verbal abuse the torturers inflicted:

 

“They ordered me to stand at attention facing the wall. I remained in this position for about thirty hours and when I asked them to free my hands so that I could urinate, they refused. As a result I had to urinate in my clothes three times… [A police sergeant then] directed at me the most horrible insults, as for example, ‘You are only worth spitting on, you unprincipled Satan, crook, coward, dog, etc.’”[78]

 

These experiences are by no means the most extreme – they are documented in dozens of the testimonies – but while they happened to many, they did not happen to all. Certain elements of these cases were universal and victims at the trials in 1975 described a typical sequence of events: When they arrived back at the detention center, prisoners would be threatened with violence against themselves and their family and told to write a confession while the ESA men decided on an interrogation technique. After this the guards would typically beat the prisoners with their clubs, fists, or both in what was called “a tea party.” [79]

Prisoners would then be told to stand against the wall or in the corner without leaning or falling over. Guards would beat them some more, increasing the severity if they fell over or left the spot they were told to stand in – this was called a “tea party with toast.”[80]

This would continue for hours, sometimes days, with the prisoner often not receiving food or drink. If they did, it might be tainted to further antagonize them – the water with soap, the food with salt.[81] For roughly the first three weeks, victims said they could not bathe themselves, change their clothes, smoke, or leave their cells to go to the bathroom, the guards forcing them to go while continuing to stand against the wall.[82]  Once the focus of the torture shifted from the first phase to one of intimidation and terror, officers encouraged their subordinates to leave marks on the victims, torturing and releasing them in a short period of time before the signs of their handiwork had disappeared in order to maximize the effects.[83]

And as harshly as the military torturers treated average citizens, they were far harder on their own.[84] Take the case of Anastasios Minis, a retired lieutenant colonel from the air force that was arrested for resisting the coup, planting bombs in protest.  In the diary he smuggled out of prison, he describes the brutal treatment he had to endure, part of which included being forced to stand for 11 days in a circle on the floor, being beaten if he stepped out of the circle, fell over, or tried to lean on the wall.[85] His guard described the ordeal in more detail:

 

His body was completely black from the beatings and something had happened in his chest so he couldn’t breathe regularly. The next day he was even worse. His legs and feet were so swollen that this pants legs had torn and the flesh was falling over his shoe tops. But he was still trying to stand up straight.[86]

 

Admiral Konstantinos Engolfopoulos, former commander-in-chief of the Greek navy, was arrested towards the end of the regime. He was stripped, locked in a cell, and exposed to blinding light and screaming megaphones for two days.[87]

Lieutenant-General Nikolaos Papanikolaou described his ordeal after being beaten, forced to stand for two days, and denied water for several days:

 

“My feet were swollen. Blood and liquid were running from my wounds and I had a terrible pain in my chest. I wanted to kill myself. [ESA chief] Theofiloyannakos was standing over me and laughing sardonically. That day they started beating me again and did not give me water. Sometimes I drank my own urine.”[88]

 

Army officer Anghelos Pnevmatikos describes the verbal abuse he endured for being a right wing royalist loyal to the deposed king after warmup rounds of beatings and five days of food and water deprivation:

 

They brought wild dogs that were held on chains and they goaded them on, pushing them into the cell to bite me, all the time shouting, “Bulgarian traitor! Wretch! Communist! Fairy! You’re going to die tonight!” Before I underwent falanga, Major Ioannidis used the method of burial on me. Behind the prison is a trench in which they put individuals and cover them with sand, leaving only the head unburied. The time of burial depends on the resistance of the victim. I cannot say how long I was buried there because the anguish, the nervous strain, and the constant questions gave false impressions of time.[89]

 

These seven examples, powerful as they are, merely scratch the surface – there were hundreds of victims that testified in the trials of 1975, all with similar stories.[90] Horrible as their experiences were, their ability to tell their story in court once the Colonels’ regime had fallen had several effects – it brought the victims, both immediate and auxiliary, closure, it brought many of the men responsible, including the higher level orchestrators, to justice, and it provided the international community with a useful model of how to hold state criminals accountable for their actions while not jeopardizing the safety of the state.

 

The Trial of the Colonels: A Regime Crumbles, A Nation Heals

When the regime of the Colonels finally fell on July 24, 1974[91] and the civilian government of Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis took over, the nation was faced with the difficult task of rebuilding the country and deciding how to deal with the abuses of the previous government.[92] Initially Karamanlis was cautious to act in most areas, not wanting to move too quickly or harshly and jeopardize his rule. He feared losing political support, either of the public or the military, or worse, inciting another military coup, a hesitance that manifested itself in an initial refusal to directly target the military. Several reforms were implemented almost immediately, though, including “releasing all political prisoners, ending restrictions on the media, recognizing all political parties, including the Communist Party, and dismissing numerous government officials affiliated with the junta.”[93]

Karamanlis also removed the authority of the military police, revamped the national school curriculum to remove propagandist references to the junta and its coup as a “revolution,” and filled key government positions with anti-junta liberals.[94] After less than two months he began removing officers of the regime from public service, the first two to go the former chiefs of the army and the armed forces, Generals Galatsanos and Bonanos, respectively.[95] A month later, in September, he placed 29 army officers, 36 total, on half pay[96] and put the former prime minister under house arrest, formally arresting him a month later.[97]

After the landmark elections of November 17, Karamanlis could finally abandon his timidity and become more forceful in his efforts. Here 69 percent of the country voted to strip the monarchy of power and re-forge the nation as a presidential republic, and his New Democracy party demolished the opposition, winning over 54 percent of the vote and securing 220 of the 300 seats in parliament.[98] This resounding victory gave Karamanlis the stability and security he needed to directly target the military.

A month later he began the assault – in December he retired 50 more officers and demoted others through undesirable transfers;[99] he audited the finances of Colonel Papadopoulos and his wife under suspicion of embezzlement, forcing her to repay $25,000 to the state; in January 1975 he formally arrested Brigadier-General Ioannidis who had spent the previous months under house arrest.[100] Then in March he made his largest cut, eliminating over 200 members of the former regime. 107 officers from the army, 30 from the navy, 30 from the air force, and 40 of varying ranks from the three branches were retired,[101] and countless members of the National Police and local security forces were also removed.[102]

Now that the majority of the former regime’s leaders and chief participants had been removed from office, it was time to initiate legal proceedings against them. Karamanlis wanted things to move swiftly yet strongly, so he setup a few parameters for this task. The trials would run for six months, beginning in July and ending in December 1975, and would allow any combination of three core offenses – treason, torture, and murder – to be levied against the members of the regime in sequence.[103]

The lightest of the three offenses was that of treason and insurrection, which focused on the responsibility of the accused in the initial 1967 coup. The courts used a rather restrictive definition of “responsibility,” though, which pared down the number of those actually charged and sent to trial. (96 were investigated, but only 24 were charged and in the end only 20 of those went to trial.)[104] Their definition said that only those who planned or carried out the coup could be charged.[105] Nevertheless, the first suit charged 15 of the regime’s top officers, including all three of the Colonels, with treason and insurrection. The state was highly involved in this segment of the trials as the new head of the armed forces and the Karamanlis government filed charges against former members of the regime.[106] When the trial ended one month later, 18 were convicted and the three Colonels were sentenced to life in prison for treason and death by firing squad for insurrection. (Eight others got life in prison for treason and 10-year terms for insurrection.)[107] These death sentences were later commuted to life terms.[108]

The trials for the second set of charges were separated into two segments – one for crimes committed directly in Athens, the other for those committed elsewhere in the country – and were initiated solely by private citizens, not under the purview of the government as the previous charges were.[109]   Defendants were not charged directly with torture, which was prohibited by the Greek Constitution but not specifically referred to by the Greek Penal Code, but rather with one or all of the following: “repeated abuse of authority, violence against a superior officer, unconstitutional detention, ordinary and serious physical injury, repeated insults to a superior, and recurrent moral responsibility for ordinary or serious physical injury.”[110]

In the trial for crimes in Athens, which involved only former members of the ESA,[111] 32 men were tried --14 officers and 18 enlisted men.[112] 11 officers were convicted and handed heavy sentences ranging from several months to 23 years; only five enlisted men were convicted, however, with sentences ranging up to six years as all of them claimed to merely be following orders.[113] (A common and frustrating defense in cases such as these, but one that holds a bit more water here – the penalty for not following orders according to Article 70 of the Greek Military Penal Code is death.)[114]  In the second segment of the torture trials, 37 men were tried, 13 of which had appeared in the earlier round.[115] In total, 23 soldiers were convicted and received sentences from three and a half months to seven years; nine others were convicted and received suspended sentences.[116]

The extremely low number of those convicted of torture – roughly 40 – can be attributed to two things. One was the fact that the prosecution granted immunity to several defendants to testify and help secure convictions against others on trial, effectively prosecuting according to its discretion and not necessarily on the merits of who was guiltiest.[117] The other was the time limit imposed on the filing of civil suits – six months for high-level officials, three months for lower ones – and the enforcement of a technicality that dismissed two-thirds of all suits filed.[118]

The final category of charges, murder, was confined solely to the events of the junta’s suppression of the student demonstration at Athens Polytechnic, a brutal action that left almost 80 dead and over 1,000 injured.[119] Thirty-two members of the regime were charged here (16 officers, 12 policemen, and 4 civilians)[120] with one of the following -- “first degree homicide, attempted homicide, illegal detention, causing dangerous bodily harm, and moral responsibility” in connection with the suppression.[121] In the end, 20 were convicted, three (including ESA mastermind Ioannidis) receiving life sentences, four (including Colonel Papadopoulos) receiving 20-year sentences, and the remainder receiving from five months to two years.[122]

 

Analysis

Karamanlis’ structured, efficient trials had spanned three broad, separate categories of charges, accused members of all ranks from the regime of crimes, from the ruling Colonels to the regular enlisted man, and secured over 75 convictions on these charges, all in just under six months.  The trials were initiated both by the government and civilians, thus they were at least partially officially sanctioned; they focused on the past, investigated and exposed a systematic pattern of abuse, and were temporary, with strict restraints on its window of operation. These somewhat stilted phrases are words Hayner uses when describing the characteristics of truth commissions,[123] and the Greek case possesses them all.

On the whole the accomplishments of the trials are remarkable as much for the ground they covered in such a short span of time as for who they ensnared in their prosecution. A warranted criticism, though, comes when considering what was left out from these trials. Factoring in only those suits that were thrown out by the court’s ruling on the filing technicality and you have hundreds of people unable to formally bring the perpetrators of these severe crimes to justice.  The courts’ restricted definition, made with the government’s desire for expediency in mind, raises a question frequently faced by countries recovering from crimes such as these – how long is needed to properly prosecute the perpetrators of state violence? If Karamanlis let the proceedings, especially for the torture section of the charges, go on indefinitely in an effort to hear and deal with as many people’s stories as possible, the security of his administration and the country as a whole could have suffered, not to mention that of the investigations.[124]

By severely cutting down the amount of time to hear cases in, though, he kept the issue prominent in people’s minds. The high amount of public support that resulted from this heightened state of contemplation allowed for all members of the regime, including the highest officials – the order-givers typically excluded from trials such as these -- to be prosecuted along with those who carried said orders out, while still preserving the stability of the country.[125]  As Amnesty International aptly says in their evaluation of the first torture trial, “A desire for speed and efficacy is not necessarily a matter for criticism, nor is length necessarily a matter for praise.”[126]

A solid argument can be made that if the government would have reversed the courts’ ruling on the filing technicality, a larger and potentially more publicly acceptable number of people could have been prosecuted, but the question remains, “At what cost?” How many more cases could have been tried without destabilizing the country? Who decides what an acceptable number is and how do they arrive at that figure? Nothing in Hayner’s analysis reveals a formula that works for all countries – instead she says the response must be tailored to each individual country. There are no one-size-fits-all prescriptions for these things.[127]

Despite this criticism, though, Amnesty said overall the trial “conformed to high legal standards” and was “able to sort out individual responsibility and to apportion blame,”[128] no small feats considering the trouble many modern countries have had affixing blame to individuals when faced with expansive systems of state terror that are engineered to encourage anonymity.[129]

Other criticisms that can be lodged against the trials rest on their restrictive definition and interpretation of key phrases: the narrow definition the courts used to determine responsibility for the coup, which affected who could be charged with treason; the lack of an explicit definition, prohibition of, and penalties for torture in the Greek Penal Code;[130] and the restricted definition of three months equaling ninety days, which greatly affected the number of torture cases being heard.

Overall, though, it seems undeniable to say that Karamanlis did a remarkable job. He exposed a large system of state terror, held fast, efficient trials with strong, enforced penalties for those most responsible, allowed the public to testify and tell their story while admitting through his actions that the government did not condone such behavior, and then shifted focus towards the rebuilding of the country, all without the model of a truth commission or other modern day successes to guide him.[131]

More importantly, though, average Greeks seemed content with the proceedings – they celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the regime every year,[132] yet there has been no major call for a formal truth commission or a new round of trials.[133] There is no inability for citizens to talk about the subject without fear of exclusion or reprisal. In short, to paraphrase a man’s response from Hayner’s book, the Greeks remember what happened to keep it from happening again, but they have forgotten the feelings and emotions that went along with it. By doing so they have been able to move on.[134]

 

Reflections

When the reign of the junta ended in 1974 the country, under the returning Karamanlis, faced a critical decision about what to do. They had just been subjected to seven years of systematic brutality at the hands of the Colonels -- hundreds had died and unknown thousands had been tortured, beaten, exiled, or otherwise affected. The government faced a difficult choice on how to proceed – how to properly renounce and punish the perpetrators of the regime without destabilizing the country through laborious and painful trials that could stretch on for months? How do you prosecute particular members of the military without cornering it, making it feel the entire institution is on trial, and inviting another overthrow? How do you rebuild the country and acknowledge the past without ignoring the needs of the countless victims?

For modern governments coming out from under systems of torture and repression the choices are more apparent – prosecute violators through the legal system, a truth commission, or some combination of the two. The Greeks did not have this luxury in 1974.  For them it was either prosecute the members of the regime through the legal system or ignore the past and move on because the concept of truth commissions would not become a viable option until almost ten years later when Argentina showed its potential.

The Greeks decided on a compromise, one that would prosecute the perpetrators and give the victims and the country as a whole an opportunity to see justice served, but one that would also contain these efforts into a very tight window and then be done forever.[135] And despite the criticisms and the admitted flaws in its execution, the handling of the fall of the regime was memorable for several reasons – it was fast, it was very organized, and it removed a large range of perpetrators from the public sector, often convicting them, without tearing the country apart or dragging it into another military regime or an endless series of trials.

At the core, though, the case is truly remarkable for one reason only -- it is one of, if not the only times that the highest level perpetrators of a repressive authoritarian regime such as this, one that committed such a systematic and wide-ranging list of atrocities on its people, were arrested, tried, convicted, and forced to serve out their sentences in their entirety.[136]

 

As Amnesty says in its comments on the ESA trial, but that are apropos for all of the trials:

“The main value of the trial lies in the exposure of such practice and in setting the example that torturers, even though protected and sponsored by a political regime, can be brought to trial and punished. A clear precedent now exists to show that political torture is not a crime of immunity outside the rule of law and condemned only by international declaration.”[137]

 

This is an incredibly important statement that reinforces the argument for this case’s worth. In six months Karamanlis was able to try a substantial portion of the most responsible perpetrators of the military regime, hold fair, balanced legal trials that incorporated hundreds of sworn statements and testimonies, and secure convictions of all rank of officials, something that rarely, if ever happens. And while Amnesty and others lodge a valid complaint regarding the frequent reduction of sentences or acquittals on appeal,[138] these were often on the convictions of lower officials. For the men most completely responsible, the three Colonels and the brains of the ESA, the charges remained, for the most part, untouched.[139]

These men, the organizers and ringleaders for the reign of terror, were sent to prison on life sentences and they were forced to serve them. They were not exonerated, and they were not freed. These men were sent away without reprieve -- Papadopoulos died in prison in 1999[140] while the others -- Makarezos, Pattakos, and ESA mastermind Ioannidis – are still there.[141]

Karamanlis was adamant on this point -- Woodhouse says in his book, “The former Colonels remained in gaol. Karamanlis had declared from the first that life sentences would mean imprisonment for life, without remission. [In fact,] many leading politicians, including [Center Union leaders George] Mavros and [George] Papandreou, considered that the sentences of death on the three ringleaders should have been carried out.”[142]

For this fact alone it is inexcusable the Greek case does not appear when discussing torturous regimes of this sort today. It set the unparalleled precedent that the people who actually conceive of, implement, and manage these systems of terror can be held accountable for their actions.  For all of the subsequent truth commissions in countries across the globe, none of them have been able to achieve what the Greek case did on this tack – either immunity provisions or faulty judicial systems or subsequent exonerations have stopped the masterminds from being punished.

So regardless of the endless other parallels that can be drawn from this case to different instances of state terror and violence – be it in method, targets, numbers of victims, ideological roots, etc. – this point above all others makes it an integral case to study and enter into the discourse because of the model it provides modern countries who may be faced with similar decisions as Greece in 1974.

The Greek case shows that a reasonable degree of justice can be served in an extremely short amount of time, can affect a large number of perpetrators of state violence, from the highest leader to the lowest grunt, and can help a nation heal and acknowledge the past without rending itself asunder.

 

 

 

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