ATHENS, Oct 5 (AFP) - Five suspected members of Greece's oldest radical group, the People's Revolutionary Struggle (ELA), will hear the verdict of an Athens special court Wednesday, after eight months of proceedings.
The suspects, four men and one woman, are all over 50. Their trial is Greece's second major courtroom drama involving radical factions, following the 2003 conviction of members of the November 17 urban guerrilla group.
The ELA process could mark the symbolic end of Greek authorities' efforts to crack down on homegrown radical groups. Greece's active radical scene formed during the country's US-backed 1967-1974 military junta and sustained action under different labels after the reestablishment of democracy.
Marxist ELA, which was founded in 1975, has claimed responsibility for two assassinations and some 250 bomb attacks on police stations, US institutions, banks and public buildings.
However, it officially suspended operations in 1995.
The five suspects, including alleged ringleader Christos Tsigaridas, stand accused of having carried out more than 70 bomb attacks, including one on a police van in 1994 in which an officer was killed. They are also charged with having instigated the assassination of a public prosecutor in 1989.
The suspects were caught in early 2003 after Greek authorities swooped in on November 17 and ELA after international pressure to boost security before the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. None of the two groups' members had ever been arrested before.
All suspects have denied any involvement with the group, except 64-year-old architect Tsigaridas, whom authorities believe to have been the group's intellectual leader and a link between its separate cells. Tsigaridas has refused cooperation with police.
Despite testimony by more than 200 witnesses for the prosecution, the mammoth ELA trial appears to have produced no rock-solid evidence against the suspects. Contrary to the high-profile trial of the far deadlier November 17 group, police have not revealed any fingerprints or other material evidence directly linking the ELA five to the crimes on trial.
Much of the prosecution's case remains based on the controversial testimony of Sofia Kyriakidou, ex-wife of suspect Angeletos Kanas, 52. Kanas, former head of a village council in the Aegean island of Kimolos, accused Kyriakidou of having plotted against him to take revenge for their divorce.
In July, public prosecutor Eleftherios Patsis reduced the charges against four suspects to membership of ELA and possession of explosives as well as having some role in the two killings and the bomb attacks.
"The accused here were simply accomplices to unknown perpetrators," Patsis said in his closing arguments.
Patsis even dropped ELA membership charges against suspect Michalis Kassimis, brother of the group's founder Christos slained by police in 1977. But Kassimis could still face life in jail if the three-judge special court finds him guilty of "active participation" in the attempted murder of a trade union leader in 1987.
If the judges stick to Patsis' curtailed charge-sheet, as widely expected, the suspects risk prison sentences of up to 25 years, compared with the multiple life terms they faced on the original, stronger charges of orchestrating or actually carrying out the attacks.
Suspects Kanas, Irini Athanassaki and Costas Agapiou, who had been originally held in cells below the high security courtroom in Greece's largest prison, were released on bail a few days before the August 13-28 Games, after completing a maximum 18-month detention period allowed under Greek law.
Tsigaridas and Kassimis had been released on bail before.
In March, Tsigaridas had asked the court to postpone the trial until after the Olympics. Tsigaridas argued that the judges could be influenced by security concerns ahead of the Games.
Charges against ELA in connection with pre-1983 attacks, including the assassination of a junta collaborator, were dropped because of a 20-year statute of limitations.