Greek police arrest fugitive militant Pola Roupa

Greek police early on Thursday arrested a militant who was in hiding with her child and whose Revolutionary Struggle group has carried out more than a dozen armed attacks, including one on the US embassy in Athens in 2007.

Police said Panagiota Roupa, 48, on the run since 2014, was involved in many of the attacks by Revolutionary Struggle, a group which declared war on all forms of government in 2003. It has said latterly it was also protesting against austerity.

Roupa is the partner of Nikos Maziotis who is in jail for attacks claimed by the group, including a car bomb that damaged the Athens stock exchange in 2009.

“She was arrested in a small apartment in Athens, where she was hiding with her child. She did not resist,” a police official who declined to be named told Reuters.

The Revolutionary Struggle group has claimed responsibility for more than 16 attacks since 2003. It shot and wounded a policeman in revenge for an officer killing a teenager in 2009, which sparked Greece's worst riots for decades.

Fugitive Roupa had been sentenced in 2013 to 50 years in prison for participating in the Revolutionary Struggle militant group until 2010.

“There is an arrest warrant (on Roupa) since 2014 for setting up and running a terrorist group, possession of explosive materials and a blast that caused injuries and material damages,” police spokesman Theodore Chronopoulos told reporters. He said an appeals court last year slapped another 11-year jail term on Roupa for the explosion of a makeshift bomb outside the Bank of Greece headquarters last April. Greece's anti-terrorism department has a case file against Roupa for a failed attempt to free her jailed partner at Korydallos prison with a helicopter last February and for taking part in a bank robbery in Athens in 2015. Police also arrested a 25-year old woman, suspected of helping Roupa hide out.

[Reuters]