Exactly 52 years ago today, on September 9, 1974, a Greek lawyer named Alexandros Lykourezos filed a criminal complaint ...

Exactly 52 years ago today, on September 9, 1974, a Greek lawyer named Alexandros Lykourezos filed a criminal complaint at the Athens Prosecutor's Office that set in motion one of the most significant trials in modern Greek history. The complaint charged 15 military officers with high treason for their roles in the coup of April 21, 1967, the night a group of colonels seized power and dismantled Greek democracy for seven years. The men named in the complaint were no minor figures. They included Georgios Papadopoulos, a colonel in Army Psychological Warfare at the time of the coup and later the junta's head of state, Stylianos Pattakos, who commanded the armored training center and rolled tanks through Athens that night, and Dimitrios Ioannidis, who mobilized military academy cadets as part of the operation. Also named were two lieutenant generals, Georgios Zoitakis and Georgios Spantidakis, who held the most senior ranks among the accused. The complaint laid out in precise detail how the conspirators had formed a secret cell within the military, recruited sympathetic officers, secured key positions across the armed forces, and then executed a classified military mobilization plan, deceiving the rest of the army by presenting the takeover as a legitimate defensive operation. According to the filing, the decision to launch the coup was taken by all the accused except Spantidakis on the night of April 20 to 21, 1967. Among the specific acts listed: surrounding and isolating the royal residence at Tatoi, forcing King Constantine to swear in the new government under duress, arresting sitting Prime Minister Panagiotis Kanellopoulos along with opposition leader Georgios Papandreou and a number of parliament members, seizing key points across Athens, suspending constitutional articles, and canceling elections that had already been scheduled for May 28, 1967. The charge carried under Article 134 of the Greek Penal Code was punishable by life imprisonment. Lykourezos also requested that the court bar all 15 men from leaving the country. The junta leaders were eventually tried and convicted, with Papadopoulos and two others receiving death sentences that were later ...