The attempted assassination of Venizelos in 1920

Thursday, July 30, 1920.
just two days after the Treaty of Sèvres was signed,
Eleftherios Venizelos is going to the train station
Gare de Lyon in Paris,
to board the Orian Express, bound for the port of Marseille
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From there, he will board the yacht owned by the Greek shipowner Empeirikos bound for Piraeus.
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He returns to Greece as a victor and trophy winner, with a treaty unlike any the country had ever signed before…
It remains, to this day, the most important treaty in the history of Greece
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and then,
there, at the train station,
He is the target of a murderous attack by two renegade royalist officers, “spiritual sons” of Metaxas.
Lieutenant Commander Apostolos Tserepis
and
Lieutenant Georgios Kyriakis of Corinth.
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The two would-be assassins were waiting for him, dressed in red coats and half-high boots,
so much so that you could easily mistake them for diplomats.
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When the prime minister was 15 meters away,
Kyriakis fired first, shooting twice and wounding him in the arm.
A French police officer lunges at the retired officer
and, together with Venizelos's guard, they try to protect the Cretan politician.
At that moment, the other would-be assassin
he shoots at and shatters the windows of a train car,
This caused panic, and the people who were in that area at the time began running in all directions.
Venizelos bent down and started running toward the baggage claim area.
Tserepis and his guards follow him.
Tserepis fires again, and this time he wounds the prime minister in the shoulder.
Venizelos trips over some suitcases and falls,
That's how Tserepis ended up two meters away….
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Later, Tserepis would say that, upon seeing Venizelos, he had a change of heart and did not want to kill him.
It was that brief moment of hesitation on the part of the retired officer that made all the difference
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a Greek squadron commander
and a French police officer manages to catch him by jumping on top of him
from the luggage rack.
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Immediately after his arrest, they took him to the police station at Lyon Station.
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A testimony that is probably closer to the truth is one that
he said:
«You met Venizelos's gaze"
(the would-be murderer) was struck by
»a split second, and they managed to disarm him…"
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The day before the attempt,
July 29,
Tserepis had received a telegram from Athens from Officer T. Skylakakis.
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By doing so, she gave him the green light to carry out the murder the following day, July 30,
since it had been decided at that time that a coup would take place in Athens.
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The Metropolitan of Ioannina, Spyridon Vlachos, also took part in the conspiracy.
In the end, the coup never took place,
since the Greek authorities had arrested the coup plotters before the uprising began.
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The news of the attempted assassination of Venizelos initially reached Athens as a falsified report of his murder.
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A wave of mass violence by the Venizelists immediately breaks out.
result?;
Gyparis's security battalion to assassinate Ion Dragoumis.
a prominent member of the Royalist faction, but also the most conciliatory and the most visionary...
(It's always the most innocent who pay the price)
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in Paris
Following the attempted murder, a French court sentenced the two would-be killers to five years in prison,
on February 14, 1921.
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Their defense attorney was the renowned lawyer Maro Jafari, whom Prince Christoforos paid handsomely.
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Two years later, the two convicts wrote a letter to Venizelos asking him to intercede with the French government so that they might be granted a pardon.
Venizelos intervened, and the two convicts were released from prison and returned to Athens.
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But what became of these two brilliant sons of the nation?;
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Well,
Tserepis was appointed steward of Prince Christoforos's estates and died in 1980 at the age of 92.
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Kyriakis was appointed the first director of the National Radio Foundation,
which was inaugurated on March 25, 1938.
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During the Occupation, he served as an announcer for Hitler’s radio station and began his broadcasts every night with the standard opening:
“Dear Greek listeners, Greece, which gained its independence in 1821, has been fighting against Anglo-French terrorism since 1915. Remember the crimes committed by Saray’s hordes in Macedonia; remember…”
After the Occupation,
(No, he was not executed as a collaborator with the Germans.)
He served as legal counsel to the Athens and Surrounding Areas Brickmakers' Fund.

Author of the article:

Yannis Golias