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Brigadier Stephen Saunders (26 July 1947 - 8 June 2000), the British military attaché in Athens, was killed on 8 June 2000 by motorcycle gunmen who were members of the guerrilla organization called Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17N). Saunders was buried with a Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone in Melbury Osmund churchyard in Dorset, close to where he had previously lived. His life is commemorated by a memorial stone set in the floor of St Paul's (Anglican) Church in Athens. == Assassination and investigation == Saunders was attacked and shot dead by two men on a motorcycle while driving through Athens traffic on his way to work at the British Embassy, Athens at 7:48 am. 17N claimed credit for the killing in a proclamation originally dated March 2000 and published in Eleftherotypia on 9 June 2000. The group charged, falsely, that Saunders was an RAF wing commander involved in the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. In fact he was an army brigadier with broad peacekeeping experience completely unconnected with the Kosovo War. 17N revealed in a second proclamation dated 11 December 2000, also published in Eleftherotypia,〔http://athens.indymedia.org/local/17N/praktika.php?day=40〕 that it had erroneously believed Saunders's embassy-issued Rover was armored. Therefore, the killers used a Heckler & Koch G3 assault rifle they had stolen from a Greek police station in August 1988. That gun jammed after one shot, and the killer() fired four more shots with a .45 Colt M1911 pistol. Saunders died in the hospital shortly afterward. Witnesses told police they saw a shorter man behind a taller man, both helmeted, on a white Enduro motorcycle. Police recovered a stolen green Modenas Kris 111cc scooter with stolen license plates parked nearby. The investigation that followed was driven by an unprecedented level of co-operation between Greek and UK Police services, with support from the U.S. FBI and CIA. Scotland Yard provided training and sent Greek-speaking police officers to compile and restudy the fragmentary evidence compiled since 17N began its operations in 1975. Heather Saunders made a highly effective televised appeal for help in finding the murderers. Family members of 17N victims formed an advocacy group Os Edo (Ως Εδώ -- "Enough" ("Up to Here" )) that lobbied for a tougher Greek anti-terrorism law, passed as Law 2928/2001. The lengthy investigation identified suspects for membership in 17N but produced no evidence usable in court. On 29 June 2002, 17N member Savvas Xiros (hitherto unknown to police) was gravely injured when a time bomb he was planting exploded prematurely in Piraeus. He agreed to confess that he had driven the scooter, with fellow member Dimitris Koufodinas carrying the G3. Before the 2003 trial of 19 suspected members of 17N, Xiros retracted his confession. Both he and Koufodinas were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder. An activist against the Greek military junta of 1967–1974 named Alexandros Giotopoulos, living underground under the pseudonym Mihalis Oikonomou since 1971, was convicted as 17N's leader and thus the moral instigator of the murder, while Savvas's brother Vasilis was convicted as the accomplice who helped preposition the vehicles. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Stephen Saunders (British Army officer)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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