Monday marked the 15-year anniversary of the firebombing of a bank branch in downtown Athens during wide-spread street protests at the time, an attack that left three bank employees dead – a high-profile arson that remains unsolved to this day.
On the occasion of the dour anniversary “To Vima” on Monday published several testimonies of eyewitnesses of the firebombing, the frantic efforts to allow first responders to reach the narrow office building on Stadiou Avenue and the extremely tense overall sentiment in the country in the spring of 2010 – the first months of what would be a nearly decade-long economic, political and social crisis in the country.
The violence came amid a general strike – including by the press – called for Wednesday, May 5, 2010, coming a day before Parliament deputies were set to vote on the first bailout memorandum negotiated by the then Papandreou government with institutional creditors, mainly the IMF.
The trio of victims – 32-year-old Angeliki Papathanasopoulou, who was four months pregnant, Epaminondas Tsakalis, 36, and Paraskevi Zoulia, 35 – died from asphyxiation caused by the fire’s smoke as they had taken refuge on the third floor of the Marfin-Egnatia bank branch. All three of the victims were bank employees.
The masked perpetrators of the attack, who emerged from a massive anti-austerity protest throwing firebombs (“Molotov cocktails”), remain unknown despite ongoing investigations and high-profile pronouncements by successive public order ministers to locate and prosecute them. Additionally, Greece’s Supreme Court last December set aside an appeals court decision acquitting several bank executives from criminal charges that they failed to install required fire detection and prevention equipment at the specific bank branch.
Marfin
The bank’s management at the time had also been vilified for allowing the branch open along a major protest route. Marfin Egnatia’s shares were subsequently sold to other financial institutions amid the economic crisis.
Speaking on Monday, both Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Defense Minister Nikos Dendias, among others, referred to the tragedy.
“Fifteen years after the Marfin crime, the murder of innocent citizens still injures our collective conscience,” Mitsotakis said in a social media post. “It also reminds us of the challenges that remain in the state’s fight against terrorism. However, it keeps the memory alive – and strengthens our democratic resolve to confront those who seek to undermine it.”
In an announcement, main opposition PASOK party noted that “…the least that’s owed to their memory, but also to the collective national subconscious, is for justice and a responsibility on the part of the political system not to again give ground to extreme and divisive ideas and toxicity.”
