Anarchist rally in support of Koufodinas planned for Tuesday evening

Police in Athens were placed on high alert on Tuesday following plans by anarchist and anti-establishment groups for an evening march in support of hunger-striking terrorist Dimitris Koufodinas.

“Solidarity with political prisoners is an indelible part of the struggle against state and capitalist terrorism,” says an announcement posted on an anti-establishment website advertising the rally, which is scheduled to start outside Athens University on central Panepistimiou Street at 7 p.m.

The march is being held to protest a decision by judicial authorities denying November 17 assassin Dimitris Koufodinas what would have been his seventh leave of absence from prison in less than two years. Koufodinas went on hunger strike at the start of the month in order to pressure authorities into granting his request. He was turned down last week on the grounds that he has never expressed remorse for this crimes, which include the assassination of 11 people for the N17 extreme left terrorist organization.

The rejection of his request has prompted a wave of violence against police and other “establishment” targets, as well as a rampage last week along the high-end shopping strip of Voukourestiou Street in downtown Athens.

In the announcement concerning Tuesday's rally, organizers accused judicial authorities of compelling “political prisoners” to “denounce their political history… in exchange for their personal and political dignity.” The “bourgeois state,” it added, “humiliates its political rivals in order to convince the oppressed that any resistance against the dynasts is futile.”

The announcement also accuses the ruling SYRIZA party of “complicity” in what it calls an “authoritarian shift.” It goes on to dismiss the leftist administration as a “government of yes men” that has “worshiped American imperialism like no other.”