Greece orders November 17 leader Alexandros Giotopoulos back to prison

Greece’s top criminal court sent Alexandros Giotopoulos back to prison, reversing a health-based release that had briefly freed the 82-year-old leader of November 17 after 24 years behind bars. The ruling put one of the country’s most politically charged terror cases back at the center of a broader debate over punishment, age and the standards that govern conditional release.

Giotopoulos had been serving 17 life sentences and an additional 25-year term for his role in the far-left group’s campaign of assassinations, bombings and robberies. He was convicted in 2003 as the organization’s leader, with the court holding him morally responsible for 17 murders, along with bombings, armed robberies and participation in a terrorist organization.

The Supreme Court overturned the Piraeus Court of Appeal Judicial Council’s decision that had granted him conditional release on health grounds on May 22, 2026. The high court’s criminal division rejected that ruling on June 15, 2026 and ordered Giotopoulos returned to prison, restoring custody over a defendant whose name has shadowed Greek security politics for more than two decades.

The case still carries the weight of November 17’s history. Formed in 1975 and named for the Athens Polytechnic uprising of November 17, 1973, the group carried out a long campaign that left 23 people dead and included dozens of bombings and robberies over roughly 27 years. Among its most notorious attacks was the killing of Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens, in December 1975. The CIA has said Welch was the highest-ranking officer it ever lost in the line of duty.

Giotopoulos was arrested in 2002 on the island of Lipsi, then prosecuted in a case that became a benchmark for how Greece handled domestic terrorism after the fall of the military dictatorship. His release had drawn public criticism from the United States, which cited the group’s murders of U.S. officials and urged Greek authorities to reverse the decision.

Other convicted members of November 17 remain imprisoned, including Dimitris Koufontinas and the Xiros brothers, Savvas Xiros and Christodoulos Xiros, as well as Sofoklis Logothetis. Their continued incarceration underscores how the state still treats the group as an unresolved part of Greece’s democratic memory, even decades after the violence ended.