It is the most impressive blow dealt by the left-wing Democratic Army of Greece to the leadership structure of its opponents during the civil war, namely in center of Athens.
It is Holy Saturday, May 1, 1948. The time is about 08:30 in the morning when the 57-year-old Minister of Justice Christos Ladas, an experienced lawyer and member of the Liberal Party, leaves his two-storey house at 4 Agiou Georgiou Karytsi Street, together with his wife Alexandra and their 10-year-old daughter, Electra. The driver of the official vehicle waiting for him opens the door.
"I will not enter yet. I'm going to light a candle in Agios Giorgis. "Wait for me at the door of the church," she will tell him. The family enters the sanctuary and after about a quarter his wife and little Electra return to the house a few meters away and Ladas gets in the car, a glittering black Buick to go to the ministry. He is sitting in the back seat. At the wheel is his driver, Stavros Menoudakis and in the position of co-driver is his personal security police officer, Spyridon Angelou.
Η limousine moves at a low speed due to the number of believers located around the church.
At 08:55 a.m. The heavy vehicle is still in front of the building of the Philological Association "Parnassos", that is, opposite the sanctuary, and is trying to head towards Edouardou Lo Street. At that moment, a young man of medium height, approaching the swarm, approaches the car. He holds a grenade in his hand.
He unlocks her, and throws her with force into the broken rear window, causing the oval explosive device to fall into the limousine. The man, unknown until then, bends down to protect himself from the fragments.
Until it explodes, a few seconds pass in which the driver brakes believing that someone has thrown a stone at the car and together with the police guard they open the doors and are thrown out to catch the perpetrator. That's when the explosion takes place. Christos Ladas is seriously injured in the right and left lumbar region while fragments have penetrated the skull.
The back of the limousine catches fire. The driver runs to help the bleeding minister who is in danger of being burned and his bodyguard with a revolver in his hand begins to chase the perpetrator.
At the same time, police officers inside and outside the temple also began to chase the terrorist. Fearing that he might escape, they shoot him. He bends over, pulls out a second grenade and throws it, seriously injuring them. police officers Panagiotis Liakopoulos, Efstathios Karatzalis and Athanasios Pinakoulias, who will exhale a few minutes later during his transport to the hospital.
Ο murderer he gets up and starts running again, but a soldier named Georgios Panagieris, who realizes what has happened, trips him and throws him down.
The perpetrator will fire a third grenade but this time he will not be able to explode. Fall on police and arrested at the same time that ambulances have rushed to pick up the injured member of the coalition government of liberal Prime Minister Themistocles Sofouli and other injured policemen, as well as a 17 year old student, the Kingdom Karras (Kapha) hit from a grenade fragment.
All of them were rushed to the Red Cross, while the perpetrator was admitted to the Hippocratic Hospital with multiple injuries, one of which was in the chest. Ladas enters the operating room in a coma, from which he will leave at 11:30 a.m.
The Minister of Health, Dr. Apostolos Orfanidis will announce to the Press that "Mr. Ladas has a wound of the left parietal country, 5-6 cm deep and a skull fracture with a torn (s.s. injury) of the brain substance, fortunately of small size. The skull was dissected (s.s. opening of the bone cavity) and perforations (s.s. small fragments) of the skull bone were removed.
One of them had eaten the brain. Reviews have shown that there are no grenade fragments in the brain. There is another injury in the lumbar region. However, from the injuries found, the situation presented by Mr. Ladas is not justified so far. It is certainly in a critical position, but not desperate. "
Ministers first arrive at the hospital, in order to have their own perception of the situation of their colleague, and then the Prime Minister Themistoklis Sofoulis with the Deputy Prime Minister Konstantinos Tsaldari, but also King Pavlos I.
The medical team is encouraged when they see the injured person reacting to the stimuli of his lower limbs and eyes. In fact, as the journalist and writer Karolos Moraitis mentions in his book "Kill Christos Ladas" (Lexitipon publications), at 12:15 pm his blood pressure had dropped from 15,5 to 14 and his pulse was normal.
In the afternoon, the medical examiner Dimitrios Kapsaskis will visit him and will express the opinion that if the situation continues to improve, or at least does not worsen, and in the next 10-15 hours, then the hopes for the Minister of Justice to be saved increase greatly. At 19:00 a new medical announcement is issued based on which:
"The state of health of Minister Ladas is still serious. Pulse good, fever 40. The fact that his condition has not worsened so far is comforting. Tonight will judge the whole situation. The doctors, Orphanides, Kourias ".
Unfortunately, the injured person will never wake up from his slumber. The reflexes of the limbs and eyes that were reacting for a moment, quickly passed, immersing Ladas even more in a coma. His fever in the next few hours will rise to 41 degrees Celsius. At 22:20 at night, his heart will stop beating. Next to him are his wife, their daughter, his two brothers and the Minister of Health, Orphanides, together with the professor of medicine, Kourias. The autopsy will show that the death came "from the multitude of small outbreaks of bleeding which had been created by the pressure of its gases inside the car, being thrown by the communist perpetrator and a grenade exploding".
On Easter Sunday afternoon, the crowd was covered with the Greek flag and transported to the chapel of the Metropolitan Church of Athens, and at 11 a.m. Monday, his funeral was held at public expense with the prices of a lieutenant general in action. At the time when the procession of the deceased arrived at the first Cemetery of Athens, the unfortunate policeman Athanasios Pinakoulias was also buried, who according to the report his death came "from fragments of a grenade, which entered through the thorn (s.s.) of the church. right eye in the brain ".
From the autumn of 1947 o Civil War has begun to escalate, entering a new phase. In essence, it started before the German occupiers even left the country and continues to fluctuate throughout the conflict. At the present time the camps are clear. On one side is the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) which is close to the Communist Party of Greece and on the other the national army of the country that is under the government, in this case that of Themistoklis Sofoulis who has united so much the forces of the Center space as well as the Right.
In order to confront the communists, it reduces "legitimacy" to a minimum through a series of legislative and administrative acts that, among other things, outlaw a number of leftist organizations and ban the circulation of the newspaper "Rizospastis" and "Free Greece".
On the opposite bank, the oscillation of the K.K.E. whether it will operate legally or illegally has been clarified. With the decision of the 3rd Plenary Session of the party, on September 11 and 12, 1947, the policy of total armed rupture with the imperialist forces of the bourgeois regime was chosen. Besides, the intentions had become clear from the choice of the K.K.E. to abstain from the 1946 parliamentary elections, which had helped secure a large parliamentary majority in the pro-royal coalition.
By the end of 1947 it was now clear that all alternatives to finding a solution to the tense situation had been sidelined and the two sides were now seeking sole military supremacy. This is indicated by two important facts:
- First, the proclamation by the K.K.E. of the Provisional Democratic Government (also known as the "Government of the Mountain") on December 3, 1947 with General Markos Vafiadis as president, who settled in the mountains of northern Pindos with the aim of liberating the country from the hostile government of Athens, as considered , and the governance of the place on a democratic and popular basis. In this context, on Christmas Eve 1947, the D.S.E. launches an attack to occupy Konitsa in order to make the city the seat of the left-wing government being formed.
- Second, the immediate reaction of the Sofouli government, which on December 27, 1947, issued the Compulsory Law 509 "On security measures of the State, the State, the Social Status and the protection of the freedoms of the citizens", which outlaws the K.K.E., the National Liberation Front (which was the largest resistance front in the war against foreign invaders) and the National Solidarity (which was the first nationwide resistance organization created in Greece after the Occupation). The law was proposed by the Minister of Justice Christos Ladas, who points out that both the K.K.E. as well as these organizations "act against the integrity of the country." Here comes his targeting.
The provisions are very strict as they point out severe punishments for those who try "by violent overthrow of the regime or the expulsion of part of the whole territory", which reach the death penalty. At the same time, the gatherings of those who propagate such ideas are prohibited, as well as the publication of such events by the press. Civil servants, military personnel or members of the other security forces who "propagate communist principles" are dismissed by summary proceedings. It is worth mentioning the fact that the sentences are imposed by the Military Courts.
As Minister of Justice, Christos Ladas will sign the executions of thousands communists. And yet he is the same man who as a lawyer in 1925 - 1926 was an advocate for the defense of 25 persecuted leaders of the K.K.E. who had been prosecuted for high treason (including the secretary of the Central Committee Pantelis Pouliopoulos) because of their party's position on the creation of a united and independent Macedonia, at the suggestion of the Socialist International. After 22 years, however, he will become their main persecutor, and since in the meantime he has been repeatedly elected member of parliament with the Liberal Party (in 1926, 1928, 1932, 1936 and post-war 1946).
He had also co-signed the LZ 'Resolution, which provided for the mass deprivation of Greek citizenship of "persons of anti-national actors". All the above reasons will "arm" the hand of 22-year-old Efstratios Moutsogiannis on May Day 1948 who will not hesitate to throw the grenade against him.
The killer from the first moment will admit that he put it KKE to hit the minister. The first testimony will be sent to the Hippocratic Hospital where he was under guard as he had "multiple wounds from grenade fragments, on the abdominal walls".
- "So the Party ordered you to do what you did?" the investigator will ask him.
- "Does he want a question?" I said this from the first moment I was caught. I am a communist, I received an order from my party, I had to execute it "he will answer, explaining that he received the relevant instructions but he designed the details for the execution himself.
He will initially deny that he had associates. "I do not know anyone. After all, it is well known that the illegal mechanism of the Party does not allow anyone to ask for such information. Everyone moves under pseudonyms. Therefore I do not find names either. But even if I did, it would still never be possible to betray them. " As for the grenades, he received them according to his statement from three unknown people, inside a German briefcase. Those who gave him the order said that he would not be punished even if he was caught "because by May 10 the Democratic Army will have entered Athens and our ideology will have triumphed".
The interrogator will ask him if he was sorry to kill Ladas. He will calmly answer: "Shall I feel sorry for him? "This Minister of Justice is responsible for the executions of my competitors and comrades that took place in Aegina, Corfu, Sparta, Kalamata and here in Athens."
From the file kept by the General Security of Athens for his person, it will appear that "he was a communist with action" who came from Koutsopodi, Argolida. He had served in the reserve ELAS (the Greek People's Liberation Army which was the military wing of EAM) and how he served in the OPLA. Kallithea. Ο.Π.Λ.Α. (Organization for the Protection of Popular Fighters) was an armed organization affiliated with the Communist Party of Greece, with tasks of gathering information and carrying out special missions that operated from 1943 to 1947.
She has been widely criticized even within the Left, as she is considered responsible for the execution of even communist comrades who were or were simply suspected of treason, bigotry, collaborating with the German occupiers or ardent supporters of the bourgeoisie. A dark spot is considered to be the "principle of family responsibility" which he also applied from time to time, killing innocents.
On Friday, June 18, 1948, the trial of Moutsogiannis and 8 other people arrested for the murder of Lada and police officer Pinakoulias will begin in the hall of the First Criminal Court of Athens, before the Extraordinary Military Court of the capital.
The president was Lieutenant Colonel Spyridon Tavoularis. The young natural perpetrator apologized for 1 hour and 45 minutes. He told how he was initiated into EAM by a Minas who was no longer alive and told him that he was like the Friendly Society that was fighting for the liberation of Greece, admitted that he was abducted as a young man, talked about his deportation to Ikaria along with other members of the K.K. .Ε. and reluctantly argued that "the struggle of the Communist Party is a fraud" and that "between what they say in the Enlightenment and reality, there is a huge difference. However, I consider myself guilty of contributing to the destruction of the Greek people. "
In fact, in his attempt to move the headquarters, he will shout gesturing: "Gentlemen of the Court, I do not know what fate awaits me. I do not deserve to live with what I did. But give me the right to live for a while. In order to be able to shout from the radios, from the newspapers, in the squares, what a fraud Communism is, how much it spoils the souls of the people ".
On June 21, the verdict is issued, according to which 8 of the accused are sentenced to death, including Moutsogiannis (three in death unanimously).
For the record, the rest of the convicts were: D. Kampanidis (three in death), V. Zannos (twice in death unanimously), K. Hatzikidis (twice in death unanimously), K. Pollatidis (once in death), X. Psomiadis (once in death unanimously voted), Maria Kampanidou (six years due to moderate confusion in synergy), Or. Makridis (twice to death as a moral perpetrator) and Emm. Sarantaridis (twice to death). The convicts were encouraged only by the final sentence of the military judge: "You can apply for pardon." Moutsogiannis will ask not to be put in the same cell with his comrades, fearing for his physical integrity.
On Friday, June 25, shortly before 6 am, six of the eight sentenced to death will be executed in the area of Goudi, behind the "Sotiria" hospital. Only the natural perpetrator Moutsogiannis and his accomplice Kampanidis were not shot, due to a pardon request. Shortly afterwards, their sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment, in return for the attitude they held during their interrogation and trial. Authorities used his case to testify about any communist arrested, in order to "be saved, as Motsogiannis was saved", who was finally released in 1964.
In general, however, there were harsh retaliations against the K.K.E. The Ministry of Justice in the place of the late Christos Ladas was taken over by the Minister of Public Order, Konstantinos Rentis, and only on the third day of Easter, 154 convicts were executed by the criminal courts.
The 24 in Athens and the rest in Aegina, Chalkida, Sparta, Tripoli, Kalamata and Thessaloniki. As of May 10, 311 people had been executed, causing international outcry even in the foreign press. Prime Minister Themistoklis Sofoulis will tell the Reuters news agency that "the decision to clear the files of convicted was taken to death by the government long before Lada was assassinated. "
* Georgios Sarris is a journalist-member of ESIEA, honored with the Ath. Botsis Award for the objective and complete presentation of historical political issues
