Closure for kin of slain official

Yesterday Tim Welch, a 51-year-old employee at Citibank in Chicago, heard a Greek court convict 15 people from the notorious Greek terror group November 17 in a string of murders of foreign diplomats and others over nearly three decades. The court found Alexandros Giotopoulos, the leader of the gang, guilty of morally instigating every murder, bomb attack, and robbery conducted by November 17 until its abrupt unraveling last year.

But the defendants escaped conviction for the first four of the group's 23 killings, including that of Richard Welch, because of a 20-year statute of limitations.

"My family is realistic that what we are getting is limited satisfaction," said Welch, who flew to Athens for the end of a nine-month trial of 19 suspected members of the leftist organization. "At least, we know that the people who plotted my father's death will be put away for many years."

Richard Welch, a brilliant Harvard-educated classicist, was the first of four US diplomats murdered by the radical leftist organization, in a time of terror that lasted nearly three decades. He had been stationed in Athens only a few months before he was murdered outside his home on Dec. 23, 1975.

Tim Welch, his brother, Nick, and sister, Molly, plan to plant a fig tree in the garden of the Athens villa where their father was assassinated.

"These people got away with the cold-blooded murder of our father," Molly said. "There will never be justice for Richard Welch. None of our loved ones will ever come back -- that is the price we have had to pay," she said clutching photographs of her father taken during his tour of duty in Greece. "What did November 17 stand for? Nothing! The only thing it did was destroy families."

Testimony from several defendants, who were rounded up after a bungled bomb attack in June 2002 led police to several November 17 hideouts, indicated that Giotopoulos shot Welch with a .45-caliber pistol. A prosecutor proposed that Giotopoulos, a French-born academic, and all 14 others convicted in the case be given multiple life terms. A sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin tomorrow.

Giotopoulos denied all 963 charges. As Michalis Margaritis, the presiding magistrate of the 8-member panel of judges, announced the convictions yesterday, Giotopoulos snickered. Before being led out of the crowded chamber, the white-haired economist told reporters, "Greece is a colony of the USA."

The trial -- the longest in modern Greek history -- was held in a special bunker-style court, set up in the women's wing of Athens's main top-security prison. More than 500 witnesses testified.

The organization -- named for the date of a student uprising at Athens Polytechnic against the military dictators who governed Greece from 1967 to 1974 -- acted with ruthless precision. It's members carried out more than 80 attacks -- killings, raids of military arsenals, and bank robberies.

The US State Department -- tallying a string of attacks on US military and diplomatic personnel in Greece -- frequently described November 17 as the most deadly terror organization operating in the West. It was only when the group began to unravel that authorities discovered the secret of its durability -- it was run by two large families and their friends. Three of the 19 accused -- four were acquitted yesterday because of insufficient evidence -- were the sons of an Orthodox priest.