Alexandros Giotopoulos

Alexandros Giotopoulos (Greek Αλέξανδρος Γιωτόπουλος; * 1944 in Paris ) is a former leader of the no longer active underground group November 17 ( 17N ) in Greece.

Born in Paris in 1944, he returned in 1947 after the war with his parents from exile in France to Greece. Giotopoulos grew up in a Trotskyist parents house, his father Dimitris Giotopoulos was the most famous of Trotsky in Greece and to have stood with him in personal contact. Shortly after the so-called Obrist coup in 1967 Alexandros Giotopoulos fled to Paris, where he continued his studies in economics begun in Athens. There he collaborated with other exiled Greeks, among them the Marxist theorist and political scientist Nicos Poulantzas. With the beginning of the student riots in 1968, Alexandros Giotopoulos became interested in armed uprisings. In 1968 he and other exiled Greeks the Trotskyite- Marxist group May 29 Later Giotopoulos taught in Paris as a professor. From the early 1990s, he was taken by the FBI as a suspect with the underground organization in conjunction. On 18 July 2002, the arrest on the island of Lipsi, where he is said to have purchased a house under a false name was. In 2003, he was sentenced to 21 life terms in prison. The appeal filed revised the verdict against Giotopoulos in May 2007 to 17 times life imprisonment. The appeal process had begun in December 2005 and lasted 246 days of the trial. Giotopoulos even fought during the process from all allegations and announced but after repeated failure of acquittal on appeal against the judgment before the European Court of Human Rights complaint.