ALBANIAN HELSINKI COMMITTEE -
GREEK HELSINKI MONITOR
P.O. Box 51393, GR-14510 Kifisia, Greece
Tel. 30-1-620.01.20; Fax: 30-1-807.57.67; E-mail: office@greekhelsinki.gr

31/5/1999

TOPIC: APPEAL TO ALBANIAN AND GREEK GOVERNMENTS FOR RESPONSIBLE REACTIONS TO TRAGIC HOSTAGE CRISIS

The non-governmental organizations Albanian Helsinki Committee (AHC) and Greek Helsinki Monitor (GHM) appeal to the Albanian and Greek governments to react in a responsible way to the tragic hostage crisis that led, on 29 May, to the death, on Albanian territory, of a Greek hostage and of the Albanian captor. An impartial joint bilateral commission need be established to investigate possible criminal charges, while Greek authorities should under no circumstances engage in retaliatory expulsions of Albanian immigrants, as they have been reported to contemplate.

On 28 May 1999, an Albanian migrant in Greece, reported as Antonis Flamour Pisli, seized a public bus in Greater Salonica and took its passengers hostages. Negotiations lasted for many hours in a chaotic situation partly due to the presence and inappropriate direct involvement of the Greek media. The Greek authorities had many opportunities to neutralize the captor, as everyone witnessed in the live televised scenes. Instead, they gave him 50 million drs. and some weapons (!) and allowed him to flee to Albania. There, in the early hours on 29 May, according to televised scenes and statements by the hostages and the Greek forensic, during an ambush by Albanian authorities, the captor shot and wounded one Greek hostage, George Koulouris, who then, while trying to get off the bus, was fatally wounded in he chest by the Albanian special forces. The latter also shot and wounded the captor and then, instead of capturing him, shot him dead, in front of another Greek hostage, on the bus.

We also call on the Greek authorities to investigate the related actions of their own police forces, which had, a few months ago, handled in an equally unprofessional manner another hostage-taking situation, leading to the death of the captor and one hostage. Such investigation should include the access freely given to the media in such scenes, which can only render the situation more dangerous.

Mainly though, we are alarmed at press reports in serious pro-government papers that the Greek «government is elaborating a set of ‘counter-measures’ which includes police operations against illegal Albanians who live in Greece» («Vima» 30/5) «but also against even all those who lack some formal paper required by the legalization procedure (…) as well as those who have legal papers but cannot prove when controlled that they meet the criteria they had previously declared» («Eleftherotypia» 30/5). Such revolting measures, inspired by a «collective guilt» principle, are incompatible with democracy and they can only nurture the already strong tendencies of Albanophobia and racism in Greek society.