Policeman 'aimed in direction of' Greek schoolboy

The bullet that killed a teenage boy, triggering the worst riots in decades in Greece, was deliberately aimed by a police officer and not fired as a warning shot, a ballistics report has revealed. Six weeks after the fatal shooting, experts have concluded that special police guard Epameinondas Korkoneas fired "in the direction" of the schoolboy and not in the air, as he has vigorously maintained. Fifteen-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos died after the bullet ricocheted off a concrete bollard in a central Athens street and struck him in the heart. The killing prompted thousands to take to the streets, calling for revenge and plunging the country into its worst civil unrest since the collapse of military rule in 1974. In the orgy of violence that followed, shops, banks, hotels, and cars were set alight. There are now fears that the report could fuel further hatred for the police, who last week sought to boost their image by staging their own demonstration in Athens. In a 9,000-word proclamation printed by an Athens newspaper, the guerilla group Revolutionary Struggle claimed responsibility for two attacks on the police in the past month. Domestic terrorism was widely thought to have been eradicated with the dismantling of the notorious November 17 group in the run-up to the 2004 Olympic Games. In its rambling declaration, Revolutionary Struggle warned it "could literally crush the police security, leaving unguarded the political and economic powers that be". "The cop's bullet fuelled a social combustion long in the making and presages far broader outbursts," it said. Although the intensity of the protests has diminished, thousands of students continue to take to the streets. Occupations of university faculties, like the trade union unrest that is also growing, have piled the pressure on a government that is clinging to power with a wafer-thin majority of one. "Greece is very volatile. Any event, any little incident and it could go up again," Panos Garganas, editor of Workers Solidarity told the Observer. "The government is just keeping its fingers crossed." Last week's kidnapping of Pericles Panagopoulos, one of the most prominent shipping tycoons since Aristotle Onassis, has added to the climate of insecurity. The magnate, who was seized as he was being driven to work and is now being held for a reported ransom of £36m, is the third high-profile abduction since June. The kidnappings have sparked a huge surge in demand for bodyguards by Greece's wealthy elite with the children of the super-rich also being assigned protection when they go to school.