Four questioned over fatal Marfin Bank firebombing

Police have taken four people in for questioning over the firebombing of a bank in central Athens just under a year ago that led to three employees losing their lives.

Sources said that the suspects are aged 21, 25 and 36. Their homes in the central neighborhood of Exarchia and in Kypseli were reportedly searched.

The attack on the branch of Marfin Bank on Stadiou Street took place on May 5 last year during a large protest on the austerity measures that had been announced by the government as part of its 110-billion-euro bailout package.

Angeliki Papathanasopoulou aged 32 and Paraskevi Zoulia 35, and 36-year-old Epaminondas Tsakalis died of asphyxiation after assailants smashed the bank?s windows and threw Molotov cocktails inside. Papathanasopoulou was four months pregnant.

They were the first deaths during a public protest since January 1991 when four people died when another building in central Athens caught fire and it prompted President Karolos Papoulias to warn that Greece had ?reached the edge of the abyss.?

Police have studied CCTV footage of the incident last May and have spoken to numerous witnesses, including those who saw an attack on the Ianos bookstore moments earlier.

It is thought that one of the suspects is being questioned about that incident as well.