The trial of Nikos Romanos, 33, and four other defendants over an explosion in 2024 in an apartment in Athens that left one person dead started on Wednesday in Athens.
Romanos is accused of participating in a terrorist organisation and the manufacture of explosive devices. He has pleaded not guilty.
In the Ampelokipi area of Athens, in October 2024, an explosion in an apartment building caused the death of a man and the injury of a woman. The authorities linked the explosion to the manufacture of an explosive device.
Police arrested the anarchist after a fingerprint was found on a garbage bag allegedly belonging to him. A weapon was also found in the bag, but there were no fingerprints of Romanos on the weapon itself.
His supporters claims he is being prosecuted for his radical political views.
“He is being persecuted for his beliefs, another on the vengeful list of the ‘usual suspects’,” the New Left party’s leader, Gabriel Sakellaridis, said.
“A young man has been in pre-trial detention for 17 months without any serious legal justification,” he added.
“There is no evidence that links him [Romanos] to the slightest point of the indictment, a fact that has been proven by the investigation by the Police and Judicial Authority … His acquittal, based on all legal rules, should be considered a given. Any other development would be a blow to the rule of law,” his lawyer, Lila Ragkousi, told BIRN.
Romanos comes from the well-known Greek Nasioutzik family. His grandfather, Athanasios, a writer, was accused in 1984 of the murder of another writer, but acquitted three years later.
At the age of 15, Romanos witnessed the killing of his friend, Alexis Grigoropoulos, who was shot dead by a police officer in 2008. The killing is marked to this day by annual protests.
In 2013, Romanos was arrested along with three others for attempted armed robbery of a bank in Kozani, western Macedonia. He was acquitted of participating in a terrorist organisation but sentenced to 11 years in prison.
In 2012, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison for possession and placement of explosive devices in the house of the former Defence Minister Giannos Papantoniou.
In prison, he took exams and was admitted to the Technical University of Athens. After a 31-day hunger strike in 2016, he was allowed to attend classes. In 2019, he was released on restrictive terms.