Counterterrorism investigators believe an apartment located a short distance from the home of New Democracy parliamentary candidate Aphrodite Nestora’s family was used as an operational base before and after the fatal July 1 firebomb attack in central Thessaloniki.
Police allege the two suspected primary perpetrators spent the previous 24 hours at the apartment conducting surveillance of the site before carrying out the attack. They are also accused of returning to the apartment after the firebombing, where they changed clothes before leaving.
Authorities said the 29-year-old suspect was known to police because of his alleged involvement in the so-called anti-state/anti-establishment movement and had previously been detained for questioning on two occasions.
The 26-year-old woman, originally from Athens and living in Thessaloniki, was remanded in custody in February 2022 over her alleged participation in the shadowing grouping “Anarchist Action,” whose members had been accused of carrying out a series of arson attacks using improvised gas-canister incendiary devices. Investigators said she traveled to Chania (Hania), on Crete, following the July 1 attack, where she was later located and arrested.
A third suspect is accused of providing the apartment used by the alleged attackers.
Counterterrorism officers believe two separate operational teams were involved in the three coordinated firebomb attacks carried out within less than 20 minutes in Thessaloniki during the early hours of July 1.
They said the three suspects arrested this week are linked to the attack on the Nestora family residence, while investigations continue into the attacks targeting the homes of Zisis Ioakeimovits, chairman of New Democracy’s Thessaloniki governing committee, and former lawmaker Savvas Anastasiadis.
The arrests followed a large-scale operation by a major crimes unit after an investigation that, according to authorities, included analysis of surveillance footage, telecoms data and forensic evidence gathered from the attack sites. Investigators have said they reconstructed the suspects’ movements before and after the coordinated attacks, which employed improvised incendiary devices made from camping gas canisters and fuel.
The July 1 attacks targeted three homes associated with the governing New Democracy party in Thessaloniki. The device placed beneath a vehicle outside the Nestora family residence triggered a blaze that spread rapidly through the apartment building, fatally injuring Vagia Nestora, the 72-year-old mother of the ND candidate. Four other people, including Aphrodite Nestora, were injured.
Authorities concluded that the attacks had been coordinated and were politically motivated.
The case has renewed attention on Greece’s long-running pattern of urban political violence associated with self-described anarchist and anti-state extremist networks.
Since the dismantling of major terrorist organizations such as November 17 and Revolutionary People’s Struggle in the early 2000s, authorities have continued to investigate smaller, loosely organized groups that have carried out arson attacks, improvised explosive device bombings and assaults against politicians, police, judicial officials, diplomatic targets, businesses and other institutions viewed as symbols of state authority or capitalism. In recent years, most attacks involving gas-canister bombs have caused property damage rather than fatalities, making the death in Thessaloniki an unusually deadly escalation.
