Five homemade explosive devices were set off overnight in Athens in front of Greek banks and the offices of the conservative party, causing damage, police said on Friday.
The Molotov cocktails exploded in front of the banks and the offices of the New Democracy party within 90 minutes, starting at 11.30 pm, but firefighters dispatched to the sites quickly extinguished the flames, police said.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks but investigators said they suspect ”anarchists” to be behind the violence following their calls this week for the release of seven anti-globalistation activists arrested in June during protests that coincided with a European summit.
Three bottles filled with flammable liquid were set off last week in front of Greek banks and Cypriot bank.
The activists’ detention has sparked a string of small demonstrations by anarchist and leftist groups throughout the country.
On Wednesday, about 150 anarchists staged a motorcycle protest outside Prime Minister Costas Simitis’s residence in central Athens.
Earlier, they rallied outside the Korydallos prison, southwest of the capital, where five of the seven anti-globalisation activists — two Spaniards, one Briton, one Syrian and one Greek — were transferred from Salonika.
The five have been on a hunger strike for a month, demanding their release on bail until their case in heard. The two others are jailed in Avlona prison, near Athens.
On Tuesday, police defused an explosive device with three sticks of dynamite and a fuse that had been planted outside an Athens branch of the American bank Citybank.
The incident was claimed by a little known group calling itself Christos Kassimis, a name used from time to time in the 1980s by a self-styled anti-capitalist group called the Revolutionary People’s Struggle, which went silent in 1995.
Mindful of the upcoming Olympic Games in Greece next summer, authorities here have made security a top priority. — Sapa-AFP