204 frames in just a few minutes, while the group of five hooded men set Marfin ablaze. These are the scenes captured by a photographer who, at the moment of the deadly was on Stadiou Street and climbed into the loft of the bookstore across the street to avoid inhaling the chemicals from the riots.

In six of these images, the police officers handling the case had numbered the members of the group of 12. The five broke away and carried out the attack, leaving three employees dead.

The journalist and eyewitness to the attack on Marfin, Ilias Provopoulos, kept this material and handed it over to the authorities three times.

Until recently, the photos could not be used to identify the perpetrators because they were not clear.

Following an anonymous email sent to the Directorate for Combating Organized Crime that named the five perpetrators of the arson, as well as the subsequent investigation, investigators from the Greek Policeanalyzed the specific evidence.

They cross-referenced it with the photos of the three suspects found on the laptop in the warehouse in Koukaki, and were able to track them down.

Mr. Provopoulos describes to protothema.gr what he remembers from that fateful afternoon on Stadiou Street. His testimony was deemed particularly crucial in determining the role of each member of the group of five who set fire to Marfin.

“At 12:58, some clashes broke out in front of Ianos with rioters. The riot police move in, clear the area, and we leave the street—as we were with other people—and go inside to take cover from the smoke bombs and tear gas. There, suddenly, we see a group of people standing out. They’re people we’ve never seen at the marches before; these people are in full uniform. Half of them are in black, the other half in khaki. Half of them are wearing khaki jockey caps, the others black jockey caps and scarves. And a woman, in between them. And so, instinctively, I pull my camera out of my bag and take these photos we’re talking about,” says the journalist, who realized that the 12 hooded individuals acted in a coordinated and organized manner to approach and set fire to the branch.

“The group—half from Eduardo Lo and the other half from Christou Lada—meets up, coordinates, and three of them head toward Marfin. One goes ahead, one smashes the window, the second throws a liquid inside—it wasn’t a Molotov cocktail. And suddenly there’s a ‘bang,’ and the third one throws something burning inside, and Marfin is filled with smoke and flames,” continues Mr. Provopoulos.

As he explains, “the group consists of about 11 people. And there were three of them: one who had the materials in a backpack, another who had something in front of him that he used to smash things—you couldn’t really see it clearly, but you could see the motion. They were wearing uniforms to stand out; we’d never seen uniforms like that at marches before—not even once. They had non-slip shoes, tracksuits, caps, and scarves.”

Mr. Provopoulos was also able to make out the physical characteristics of the members of the group of 12. In his statement to the police, he declared with certainty that numbers 7, 8, 9, 11, and 12 were the ones who smashed the window and set the branch on fire.

“There was a tall man wearing glasses, a woman with a ponytail—blonde, as could be seen beneath her scarf—a man of medium build who was carrying the heaviest load in his backpack, and a man with a red scarf. We’ve seen him in the photos from the attack on the Regional Administration building on Syngrou Avenue,” he emphasizes.

Source: Protothema.gr