Honorary chief of Greek armed forces sees arrest of two soldiers as ‘set up’

The honorary leader of the Hellenic National Defense General Staff (GEETHA), Manousos Paragioudakis, on Thursday told Skai television that he believes the arrest and detention of two Greek soldiers by Turkish authorities was "set up."

"There is no way that they were simply arrested by Turkish soldiers," Paragioudakis told Skai. "It must have been some other force which is trained to do that, some kind of special force which had been trained to snatch two Greek soldiers," he said.

"At sea, it is easy to ram, in Evros it is not so easy," he said, adding that arrests are rare in the region. "I believe the incident was set up," he said.

The fact that the soldiers were not returned on the first day, as is usually the case in several previous instances of Greeks mistakenly crossing the border, "creates serious complications," he said. "We really are in trouble," he added.