Alexandros Giotopoulos, the convicted leader of the November 17 terrorist organization, has been arrested at his suburban Athens home and returned to prison days after his release, following a Supreme Court ruling that his conditional freedom had been granted in legal error.
Officers took Mr. Giotopoulos into custody after he briefly entered a taxi outside his home, transferring him to Korydallos Prison before moving him to Athens police headquarters overnight.
He was due to appear before a Piraeus appeals prosecutor Tuesday to formalize his re-incarceration.
The Supreme Court accepted an appeal by Deputy Prosecutor Sofoklis Logothetis, overturning a lower judicial council's decision that had freed Mr. Giotopoulos after nearly 24 years behind bars.
The high court, adopting the reasoning of Supreme Court Justice Foteini Athanasiou, ruled that a 2021 penal law specifically governing inmates serving multiple life sentences applies to his case — requiring a minimum of 25 years of actual imprisonment before parole eligibility, not the 19 years applied by the lower council.
Under that binding interpretation, Mr. Giotopoulos will not be legally eligible for conditional release until 2027.
Mr. Giotopoulos is serving 17 consecutive life sentences for orchestrating November 17's assassination campaigns, which killed 23 people over nearly three decades including American, British and Greek targets before the group was dismantled in 2002.
His brief release had provoked an outcry from victims' families and allied governments.