Rhodes, early morning of May 22, 1967. One month after the overthrow of the Republic by the Colonel's Junta, fishermen of the island locate the body of an unknown man on the southwest side of the island, on the coast of Agios Georgios Gennadiou.
He is lying on his back and seems to be around 35 to 40 years old.
When they approach him, they are surprised to find that in left side of the chest has a large hole, most likely from a bullet. They inform the authorities who without hesitation officially announce that the death came from drowning and that the corpse belongs to lawyer Nikiforos Mandilaras. The version of drowning seems from the beginning aeolian.
Before we see how we got to the murder that could easily have been made into a movie, let's see who Mandilaras was.
He was a successful lawyer who had dared a year earlier to reveal that a coup was imminent and had even submitted to the court a medical opinion claiming that the colonel George Papadopoulos suffered from a psychiatric illness (which was not found in the relevant case file while the doctor who had signed it was found during the dictatorship completely… accidentally hanged in his psychiatric clinic).
He was deeply politicized, a friend of Andreas Papandreou, with whom he often chatted, having run for parliament and for a member of the Center Union, he did not hesitate to put up with even the Palace, saying meaningfully that "our names do not end up in Burg", in apparently in contrast to that of the then young King Constantine II, who belonged to the House of Glücksburg.
The biggest moment of his career was when he undertook the defense of the accused in the ASPIDA case. that rather what he said and the way he moved cost him his life.
Briefly note that the case Α.Σ.Π.Ι.Δ.Α. was a politico-military scandal that broke out in mid-May 1965, when the commander of the Greek forces in Cyprus, General George Grivas, informed the Ministry of National Defense that a conspiratorial organization of left-wing officers with a political leader had been created within the army. Andrea Papandreou, which intends to overthrow the legitimately elected government, abolish the ruling Republic and impose a dictatorship. The name of the movement comes from the initials of the phrase "Officers Save Your Homeland, Ideally, Democracy, Merit" (Α.Σ.Π.Ι.Δ.Α.).
In the military court, Mandilaras will undertake the defense of one of the accused, Captain Aris Bouloukos, and in this capacity he will put the witnesses in an extremely difficult position with his questions. Some of them were later to take an active part in the coup of April 21, 1967. His questions became so irritating that one of the right-wing officers who testified stood up and moved against him.
The lawyer was saved thanks to the intervention of the police. In the courtroom he will say that the charges against the defendants in the ASPIDA case were made by Georgios Papadopoulos and his company.
When the Junta and the first persecutions begin he understands that he will be one of the first who will want to arrest the authorities.
His house is located at 44 Alexandra Avenue, where the tanks will pass by order of the brigadier general of the armor Stylianou Pattakou in order to occupy key points of the capital.
He stays in the apartment building where he lives, but for safety he takes refuge in the downstairs apartment of a friend of the officer until he finds a way to leave the country. If he managed to escape abroad, he would save his life and criticize the regime from there.
In early May 1967, a colleague working as a legal consultant for a shipping company undertook to flee him to Cyprus by ship. From there it could easily go to western Europe.
But Aspa's wife has objections from the beginning. He is afraid of the depositors. Mandilaras reassures her. She secretly meets the captain of the cargo ship "Rita V", Petros Potagas, and from the conversation she thinks that she can trust him. Late on the night of May 16, he arrives in complete secrecy at Scaramangas and board the ship. He finds refuge in the master's cabin after consultation with him and is locked up.
He waits anxiously for the time to come when the truck will untie the ropes. In the morning the crew gets on board and finally starts with destination Famagusta.
The ship leaves the Gulf of Eleusis, crosses the Saronic Gulf and now travels to the Cyclades. During the voyage, the lawyer wanted by the junta does not leave the captain's cabin for a moment. One should not see him as only the captain knows his presence theoretically.
His anxiety is obvious. It will calm down only when they leave the Dodecanese behind and find themselves in international waters. They do weigh. The weather conditions are ideal for the trip. The sea is calm, the visibility is perfect and no suspicious movement can be seen on the horizon, until the first signal from the Ministry of Merchant Shipping arrives at noon on May 18th.
"To the master: Indicate urgently and responsibly if your ship is carrying foreigners to the crew as well as complete details of these. In case of affirmation, you put persons under safe guard and sailed to the port of Rhodes, waiting for the arrival of the Port Authority. STOP Urgently signaled your position, speed and possible time of arrival at Rodon STOP "he says verbatim, adding that the captain becomes personally responsible in case the ship does not obey the orders.
Potagas "freezes".
He replies that "after a detailed investigation no one was found" and hurries to his cabin to inform Mandilaras. It is obvious that he has been betrayed.
The port authorities are not convinced by the evasion of the master and a little while later they send a second signal in a similar style. An explicit order is given to stop the voyage by keeping the "Rita V" off the coast awaiting newer instructions as well as to prohibit its approach from another boat. This is followed by a third in which the Ministry of Merchant Shipping demands that the truck sail "through the east coast of Rhodes and at a distance of 5 miles from them to the port of Rhodes", giving its position and speed, as well as possible arrival time in the port of Rhodes in order to be audited.
Later the captain will testify that at that point Mandilaras pressed him to let him fall into the sea so as not to be arrested. In Rhodes he had his own people as he had visited the island for legal cases in the past. "Let me get as close to the shore as you can and I will go swimming" he will say to Potagas who, in order to save time, reduces the cruising speed to reach the island at night so that the βά smuggler who tries to escape can not be seen.
The wanted person descends with a rope from the ship and according to the version of the dictators "during the descent, due to slipping of his hands on the rope, he fell abnormally into the sea, as a result of which his head hit the boat, he lost consciousness. and drowned "resulting in his body being washed ashore five days later.
But the truth is completely different. Mandilaras wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt goes down to the sea with the rope. He has with him a life jacket and a plastic package with his clothes, so that they do not get wet. It is only four kilometers from the mainland, it is a diligent swimmer, a former commando and the waters are completely calm. A person who knows even a basic bath is more likely to be saved.
When the men of the Coast Guard arrive on the ship, Mandilaras has reached the beach of Lardos. They search every Rita V apartment and when they find out that the man they are looking for is not there, they arrest the captain. At the same time, the General Directorate of National Security, the Rhodes Gendarmerie Directorate and the island's army are informed, in order to look for every possible and unlikely beach that Mandilaras could have gone to. According to testimonies, the order they have is "wherever you find him, weigh in on the search".
The late Dodecanese MP, former mayor of Rhodes and lawyer George Chiotakis, in the book "Nikiforos Mandilaras - The murder of a fighter" (published by Iolkos) that he signs with journalist Giannis Koridis, states that not only his friend was alive , but also that a villager approached him on May 18, 1967 at the courthouse of Rhodes and conveyed a message to the wanted person that he was hiding on the beach of Lardos.
"I did not know if the person who told me was provocative or honest. I thought of going to meet him. But then I decided it was better to wait for another message. In the evening, however, discussing with my wife, we decided that we had to risk it because he could really need us, "says Chiotakis. During the journey, he realizes that security men are watching his car while they stopped him in two blocks. As an excuse he told them that he was going to a nearby village to talk to some of his clients who had real estate disputes.
He could not continue the search. Twenty-four hours later he would read in the newspapers that the body of Mandilaras had been washed on the beach of Agios Georgios Gennadios.
The question marks that are caused are many:
1. The report of the doctors of her hospital Rhodes who proceeded to the autopsy and necropsy reported that the man had injuries to the skull, a hole in the left hemithorax and a broken arm, suggesting that he may have been the victim of murder. The junta made noise. He immediately called from abroad the head of the Athens Forensic Medicine Service, Dimitrios Kapsaskis (who has been criticized for his cooperation with the regime but also for his handling in other cases) and asked him to write a new report, which is signed together with the medical examiner. Athens Georgios Agioutantis. In it he talks about drowning without bloating and without the presence of water in the lungs, something that sounds unlikely.
"The version that he was violently swept away by the current on the side walls of the ship, equal to the water level, is the most probable," Kapsaskis will typically state. The text is forced to be signed by the doctors of Rhodes under the threats and the suffocating pressure of the Security.
2. The corpse was found 12 whole meters away from the sea on a beach paved with gravel and uphill. In order for an athletic heavy body like Nikiforos to explode at such a great distance, there had to be a big and unusual storm. But the meteorological bulletins of those days report good and mild weather.
3. Blood flowed from the dead man's ear, which painted the pebbles red. A corpse that is supposed to have stayed in the sea for days does not bleed.
4. The funeral of Nikiforos Mandilaras will take place with brief procedures on May 24, 1967 in Rhodes before his family even arrives at the cemetery to be informed about the death of her loved one by journalists.
5. During the post-colonial period, a secret military signal of the junta was revealed, which strengthened the version of the execution as it wrote characteristically: According to the latest information, it is roaming around the area of Lardos. Appropriate measures have always been taken to arrest him. " Apparently the one who shot him must have come from the army that had been deployed to locate him in Rhodes.
At trial followed at the Three-Member Criminal Court of Rhodes, Captain Petros Potagas (who some will suspect may have been a collaborator of the junta, although he was never proven, while among others he was savagely beaten by the Coast Guard to testify what he knew) will be sentenced on 4 October 1967 negligent homicide and will be sentenced to 27 months in prison which will then be reduced to 12 months. He redeems the rest of his sentence and is released. He is looking for a job but finds nowhere as his master's diploma has been taken away and so he leaves for South Africa with his family.
Very soon, on January 9, 1968, he died under unknown circumstances in a car accident in Johannesburg, although his relatives claim that he shot himself.
After the fall of the dictatorship, in 1975, the Plenary Session of the Athens Court of Appeals prosecuted for intentional homicide mainly against the lieutenant colonel of the junta, Konstantinos Papadopoulos (brother of the dictator), and its then commander EAT-ESA Ioannis Lada. Athens Appellate Andreas Floudas was appointed investigator.
The case is being taken to the archives in 1978, although the evidence reinforced the scenario that Mandilaras was shot and did not drown.
The family of Naxiotis lawyer asks for an exhumation in 1983 in which the medical examiner Antonis Koutselinis finds the existence of an overwhelming fracture in the skull. One year later, on December 7, 1984, the Plenary Session of the Board of Appeals tried to reopen the case that was withdrawn from the file. A new criminal prosecution for premeditated murder against Papadopoulos and Ladas is enough. In 1986, the Board of Appeals indeed described the death as "premeditated murder" with the two accused former colonels as the perpetrators, but the case was finally dropped.
The most important documents from the file of the original trial were not found, while the cargo ship "Rita V" was destroyed in the 1980s by fire.
* George Sarris is a journalist - member of ESIEA, honored by the President of the Republic with the Ath. Botsis Award for the objective and complete presentation of historical political issues