What Happens to Old Terrorists?

July 31, 2002 -- Douglas MacArthur, the legendary American military man, once famously proclaimed, "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away."

But as the war on terror plods on, and the hunt for Osama bin Laden proceeds fruitlessly, there are many more terrorists who have never been caught. So what happens to them?

That's a question Greek authorities believe they are answering these days, after they began capturing suspected key members of a radical leftist group that eluded them for almost three decades.

In the past month, Greek police have arrested more than a dozen suspected members of November 17, a terrorist group accused of killing 23 people, including several foreign diplomats, since it hit the international stage with the 1975 slaying of a CIA chief in Athens.

Among the authorities' biggest captures is Alexandros Giotopoulos, who police consider the mastermind of the organization. Giotopoulos, 58, was captured earlier this month on the remote Aegean island where he lived and worked at a job translating French texts.

Another one of Giotopoulos' alleged accomplices, Theologos Psaradelis, 55, was a retired printer. And yet another, 50-year-old Nikos Papanastasiou, ran a very public souvenir shop in central Athens.

Other suspected members include a bus driver, an elementary school teacher, a beekeeper and a telephone operator.

Living Out the Lie

It is widely held that November 17 operated with impunity for so long because of incompetence or disinterest among the Greek law enforcement community. In an ABCNEWS article from 2000, Cristina Welch, the widow of the CIA chief who was November 17's first victim, accused the Greeks of having an attitude of "'Let's not talk about it. Let's put it under the rug.'"

However, terrorists around the world have managed to "fade away" in much the same way that November 17 did.

For example, it took U.S. authorities almost a quarter-century to catch up with Kathleen Soliah, a radical wanted for bombing police cars in Los Angeles in 1975, because she had fashioned a new identity for herself as a model suburban housewife. Earlier this year, the 55-year-old mother of three was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

International authorities took just about as long to nab Fusako Shigenobu, the alleged mastermind of a 1974 siege of the French Embassy in the Netherlands. While she is believed to have escaped to Lebanon after the siege, Shigenobu was ultimately captured, at age 55, in rural western Japan.

Former U.S. military intelligence officer Timothy Lomperis noted that terrorists often adopt innocuous alternate lives. Of his experiences tracking the enemy Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, he said, "They took the most unassuming jobs, selling books, owning teahouses."

He also noted that like the Viet Cong, the members of November 17 were part of a movement, and escaped justice for so long with the help of sympathizers. Media reports say November 17 was even further insulated from detection because many of their members were related.

But, he added, "although these webs of silence are intricate, they are also very thin."

How They Got Caught

Police reports say November 17's protective net began to crumble after a botched bombing in June led to the capture of a suspected member, who in turn revealed other suspects. However, experts argue that the revealing of Europe's most elusive terrorist group was long overdue.

November 17 took its name from a 1973 student uprising that was violently suppressed by the military junta that then ruled Greece, and in subsequent attacks, pronounced themselves Marxists defending the people against oppression.

But time takes its toll on terrorists and their causes. In the years since 1973, Greece has become a democracy, and leftist causes lost their appeal as the Soviet Union collapsed and the world embraced capitalism. "Nobody has any great passion to protect them anymore," said Lomperis, now a political scientist at Saint Louis University.

While some Greeks once romanticized November 17, the group lost popularity in recent years after it targeted Greek businessmen, and victims of their attacks spoke out about their suffering.

In addition, there is widespread speculation that the upcoming 2004 Olympics in Athens may have provided additional impetus for catching members of the group.

Developments outside of Greece also contributed to the end of November 17's deep cover, said Joshua Spero, a counterterrorism expert at Merrimack College in Massachusetts.

The intense anti-terror climate in the wake of Sept. 11 obviously aroused international cooperation, he said. Britain's Scotland Yard and the FBI contributed to the effort against November 17.

Experts noted that sometimes, the clock might do more to weaken terrorists than any single counterterrorist effort. "My suspicion is that this may be the fate of al Qaeda," said Lomperis, referring to bin Laden's terror organization.

History's Charming Spell

On the other hand, the passage of time can also be a boon to terrorists.

In the case of alleged November 17 member Pavlos Serifis, the 26 years that have elapsed since the murder of CIA station chief Richard Welch and Serifis' arrest means that he will not face murder charges. Greece has a 20-year statute of limitations.

However, Spero noted that terror often "has its own category."

"In most categories, even 30 years old, they'll find a way to convict and indict and keep it an open question," Spero said. Serifis faces general terrorist and weapons accusations that could still bring a life sentence.

Time can be good for accused terrorists and militants in another way, though. If they survive long enough, Spero said, they can lose the infamy and become mainstream political players — like Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and former South African President Nelson Mandela.

Arafat spent almost his entire adulthood as a wanted man — considered a key figure in the Palestinian organizations responsible for many of the most devastating terrorist acts of the 1970s and 1980s.

But after appearing before the United Nations in 1974 and renouncing terrorism in 1988, Arafat has become the voice of the Palestinian people and a key negotiator in most Middle East peace efforts.

Mandela is best known today as the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize winner who led South Africa out of apartheid. Yet for almost all of the three decades before he won the prize, Mandela was in jail — convicted of trying to overthrow the government, accused of being a terrorist.

It's not only the passage of time that allowed these men to make their transitions — but the changes that come with time. Arafat mellowed his public position as he aged. Mandela's stance against apartheid did not change, but the world's attitude toward racism and South Africa did.

The New Generation

On the other hand, the world's unforgiving attitudes toward terrorism means that authorities will hardly consider that a future Nelson Mandela may be among their captures.

In fact, one of the most wanted men in the world, Ayman al-Zawahiri, shows how some can get angrier and deadlier with time. When he was 30 years old, Zawahiri was arrested, along with hundreds of other Islamic militants, on suspicion of involvement in the 1981 assassination of the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

Authorities were unable to prove his direct involvement, but he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for weapons possession. Zawahiri has spent his life since traveling around the world in support of Islamic fundamentalist causes.

Today, Zawahiri is wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, and the Sept. 11 attacks. Only bin Laden ranks higher on the international wanted lists.

Lomperis, the former intelligence official, offered an explanation for the dogged zeal of the new terrorists. The old terror groups were driven by a certain ideology, but when that failed they still had their culture to fall back on, he said. He pointed out that when the Soviet Union fell, there were still Russians, when the Baader-Meinhoff gang was caught, there were still Germans.

Al Qaeda's motivations, as he sees it, are different, tied to a unique and widespread worldview. "There's the potential shattering of a whole belief system," he said. "It's enormously portentous."