The bullet that killed a teenage boy, triggering the worst riots in decades in Greece, was deliberately aimed by a police officer and not fired as a warning shot, a ballistics report has revealed.
Six weeks after the fatal shooting, experts have concluded that special police guard Epameinondas
Korkoneas fired "in the direction" of the schoolboy and not in the air, as he has vigorously maintained.
Fifteen-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos died after the bullet ricocheted off a concrete bollard in a central Athens street and struck him in the heart.
The killing prompted thousands to take to the streets, calling for revenge and plunging the country into its worst civil unrest since the collapse of military rule in 1974. In the orgy of violence that followed, shops, banks, hotels, and cars were set alight.
There are now fears the report could fuel further hatred for the police, who last week sought to boost their image by staging their own demonstration in Athens.
In a 9000-word proclamation printed by an Athens newspaper, the guerrilla group Revolutionary Struggle claimed responsibility for two attacks on the police in the past month.
Domestic terrorism was widely thought to have been eradicated with the dismantling of the notorious November 17 group in the run-up to the 2004 Olympic Games.
Revolutionary Struggle warned it "could literally crush the police security, leaving unguarded the political and economic powers that be.
Although the intensity of the protests has diminished, thousands of students continue to take to the streets.
Last week's kidnapping of Pericles Panagopoulos, one of the most prominent shipping tycoons since Aristotle Onassis, has added to the climate of insecurity.
- OBSERVER
