Victims of 2010 bank firebombing remembered

Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou and other officials paid tribute on Thursday to three bank workers who perished in a deadly firebomb attack in downtown Athens on May 5, 2010, during a riot after the country signed its first bailout deal with international creditors.

Describing them as “victims of blind fanaticism and ideological violence” in a statement issued by the presidency, Sakellaropoulou laid flowers on a plaque erected in the memory of Epameinondas Tsakalis, 36, Paraskevi Zoulia, 32, and Angeliki Papathanasopoulou, 32, at the spot where they died on Stadiou Street.

The central Athens branch of the Marfin Egnatia Bank was firebombed by hooded assailants during a riot on the sidelines of an anti-austerity protest. No one has been convicted for the attack.

The plague also refers to the fact that Papathanasopoulou was pregnant when she died after becoming trapped, with her colleagues, in the smoking building.

“We will not forget the 4 lives that were lost,” Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said in a post on Twitter.

“Angeliki’s unborn child would have been 12 today. It would have been in middle school, reading and playing. We will not forget them, like we will not forget Epameinondas and Paraskevi. We will not forget any of the victims of Marfin so unjustly lost on that cursed day,” Athens Mayor Kostas Bakoyannis said in another social media post.