GREEK PARANOIA
0 ne can forgive a certain bafflement on the part of the Greeks on discovering 12 British plane-spotters at Kalamata air base. It is hard to explain why a grown man should want to put on an anorak, pack some Marmite sandwiches and a vacuum flask of tea, and press his nose to a wire-mesh fence in the hope of taking down the registration numbers of a group of undistinguished helicopters. More puzzling still, to the Greek mind, is why he or she should choose to do this amid the incomparable natural beauty of Greece. Is she not the mother of our European civilisation? What price the Parthenon? It must seem incredible that 12 rational people should prefer to camp outside an airbase than go to the beaches or to the tavernas. And yet that is what they did, because they share a harmless English eccentricity; and the Greek treatment of the Peloponnese Twelve has been shocking.
As this magazine goes to press, the plane-spotters face another ten days in jail, having been held already for three weeks without charge. Even if we were still locked in a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and the 12 nerds had been caught outside some airbase in Moscow, it is hard to imagine that the Russian authorities would have behaved so sadistically or so moronically. The Greeks are not only our Nato allies but are also fellow-citizens of the European Union; and yet they have a history of paranoid treatment of blameless British civilians. When parts of Saddam Hussein's proposed `supergun were seized by Greek customs officials II years ago, the authorities held on to a British lorry driver long after it should have become obvious that he was an innocent party. In 1977 an earlier batch of English plane-spotters was seized and imprisoned for six months. Not even birdspotters are safe in Greece: several have run into trouble after being caught with binoculars and notebooks, gazing suspiciously skywards.
Like Britain, Greece is a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights, and yet the fate of the prisoners has been worse than that of some foreign-aid workers captured by the Taleban. The only woman, Mrs Lesley Coppin, a grandmother of 51, has been held in the notoriously vio lent women's jail in Athens, where she shares a dormitory with 14 others. The male prisoners describe their conditions as 'filthy', and sleep on thin mattresses on concrete. One Greek foreign office source has had the grace to admit that 'this is a straight case of modern reality being usurped by the implementation of an antiquated legal system'.
As is so often the case with incompetent legal systems, over-reaction towards the innocent is combined with dismal underreaction towards real criminals. Contrast the Greek crackdown on the 12 English planespotters with the handling of the terrorist group N17. Over the last 25 years this Marcist-Leninist group has been responsible for more than 100 shootings, bombings, stab
bings and knee-cappings in which 23 people have been killed. These now include the British military attache in Athens, Brigadier Stephen Saunders, who was gunned down by two motorcyclists as he drove to work in his Rover in June 2000. No one has been arrested in connection with his murder; and, more amazing still, no member of N17 has ever been brought to justice. On the day of Brig. Saunders's assassination, R. James Woolsey jnr. a former director of the CIA, said: 'I believe there are people within the Greek government who know some members of November 17.' In view of the utter failure to catch his killers, that claim seems ever more plausible. Athens is now considered by British diplomats to be one of the most dangerous postings in the world — an astonishing achievement for a member of the European Union.
It is possible — and this is the real tragedy — that there is no contradiction between the Greek bullying of British plane-spotters and Greek supineness towards the N17 terrorists who kill British and American diplomats. Both are characteristic of the general Greek touchiness about the role of America, and of Britain, America's closest ally. In common with other small European nations, the Greeks have been offended in the past few weeks by the Anglo-American alliance riding roughshod, as they see it, over European sensibilities, and making a mockery of the so-called 'European Security and Defence Identity'. The Greeks also feel that they have had their manhood insulted by having to co-operate with a fellow Nato member, Turkey, their traditional enemy.
The Greeks must grow up, fast. Why is it that the US Air Force feels able to set up a dedicated plane-spotters' area outside its base at Lakenheath, Suffolk, while the Greeks jail anybody who so much looks its docile old jets in the eye? It is a question of confidence. If Greece wants to be taken seriously, militarily as well as on human rights, it should free the Peloponnese Twelve. It is time for Jack Straw and the Foreign Office to achieve a result without delay. To that end. Britain should now threaten a boycott of the 2004 Olympics in Athens — if only on the grounds of inadequate security.
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