Greece: A "No-Go" Zone in Athens?
by Maria Polizoidou
April 20, 2019
"[T]he neighborhood has... platoons, companies, battalions, Kalashnikovs.
I don't know any more if we, as a police force, have the political mandate to clear the area.
This region is a matter for the army now."
- Stavros Balaskas, vice president of the Greek Federation of Police Officers, April 6, 2019.
"...[T]here are now too many illegal immigrants in Exarchia who are drug traffickers [and] gun traffickers... they have essentially taken over the whole place."
- Michalis Chrysochoidis, a former Greek Minister of Citizen Protection, who was responsible for the 2002 dismantling of the "November 17" domestic terrorist organization, April 8, 2019
In Exarchia, these groups -- which conduct criminal activities and terrorize local residents -- have, in effect, created a "no-go zone,"
where even police are afraid to enter.
An assault on members of the Hellenic Coast Guard during a drug raid in Athens on April 4 highlights a growing problem in Greece.
Some opponents of the far-left Syriza-led government attribute the increasing drug traffic in the country to a dangerous alliance between political anarchists and illegal immigrants.
The anarchists might be considered the Greek equivalent of the "far left".
.....The April 4 incident was sparked when Greek authorities arrested a Syrian national on a ferry at the Piraeus Port; he was carrying 200 grams of marijuana, which he said he had purchased from an Egyptian drug dealer in the Exarchia neighborhood of Athens.
Eight members of the Coast Guard and a prosecutor immediately went to Exarchia to raid the supplier's apartment, located in one of 50 buildings in the neighborhood that are occupied by illegal-immigrant squatters.
When the officers and prosecutor arrived at the building, they arrested two female suspects, a Greek-Australian and a Syrian national, and confiscated 1.5 kilograms of cannabis and a Glock pistol.
On their way out of the building, the officers were ambushed by a masked mob, wearing helmets and bulletproof vests, and armed with knives, clubs and assault rifles.Two Coast Guard officers were stabbed in the attack, and their weapons taken.