Group claims police station grenade attack, reiterates threat of escalation

A group calling itself Armed Revolutionary Struggles has claimed responsibility for a grenade attack a police station in the Athens suburb of Kaisariani in the early hours of Monday, in which a bystander was lightly injured.

A surveillance video from the scene of the attack shows two assailants approaching the police station and the hand grenade being lobbed into its entrance before they make off on a motorcycle.

Shrapnel from the blast caught a taxi driver in the leg and a few cars parked outside the station were damaged.

Shortly after, a group identifying itself only as anarchists wrote on a website claiming responsibility for the attack, which was not confirmed by the authorities until several hours later.

On Thursday, however, a post appeared on the same website signed Armed Revolutionary Struggles and confirming that the attack was intended to express solidarity with a suspected parcel bomber who is on hunger strike in demand that he be transferred from a penitentiary in central Greece to the capital’s Korydallos Prison. He started his hunger strike when he was taken back to Larissa after a brief stint in Korydallos for a court appearance in Athens. The operation to transfer him sparked a small riot in the prison.

“The state should be aware from now on that every time it reaches out a hand to touch an anarchist inmate, then a hand of ours will also reach out to destroy the temples of dominance and shift the fear into the establishment’s camp,” the message said.

The post came a few hours after another saying that a recent spate of anarchist-related violence is “a wave that will sweep away the SYRIZA government and make December 2008 seem like a pleasant dream.”

“This time, blood will flow if Dinos dies,” the writers threatened, using the hunger striker’s nickname and referring to the nationwide, week-long riots sparked by the killing of a teenage boy in Exarchia by an off-duty police officer on December 6, 2008.