A Fire Service rescue team responds to a blaze at the Marfin branch on Athens’ central Stadiou Street, caused by Molotov cocktails during a nationwide, anti-austerity rally on Wednesday, May 5, 2010, at the start of Greece’s crippling financial crisis. [Christina Zachopoulou/AMNA]
Sixteen years after the deadly arson attack on the Marfin Bank branch in Athens that killed three employees, Greek authorities have arrested two men and issued a warrant for a third suspect, reopening one of the country’s most high-profile unsolved cases.
The two arrested men, both 42, appeared before a prosecutor and were granted time to respond to the charges. A warrant was also issued for a 46-year-old woman living in Brighton in the UK.
The arrests came after a two-year reinvestigation conducted by the Homicide Division of the police’s Directorate for Combating Organized Crime, often referred to as the “Greek FBI.” Investigators reexamined photographs, video footage and witness testimony from the May 5, 2010, attack, including the account of a photojournalist who had described the movements of the group involved without identifying individuals because their faces were concealed.
Authorities said the breakthrough came from comparing images taken during the demonstrations and arson attack with photographs discovered in a house in the Athens neighborhood of Koukaki during an anti-terrorism investigation into explosives. The archive included pictures of some suspects on summer vacations on a Greek island before the attack.
