Greece has had a very bad press indeed over the fourteen foreign plane spotters, who chose to ignore three separate warnings, carried on taking photographs at a Greek military air show and ended up in jail for their troubles.
Plane spotters rival train spotters in the fanaticism that they bring to their bizarre hobby. At most air shows they are perfectly at liberty to scribble down the numbers of aircraft and photograph every part of the outside from every angle. But the Greek authorities, understandably nervous after the events of Sept. 11 were not in the mood to indulge the plane spotters. They arrested them all, 12 Britons and two Dutchmen. The justice authorities in Athens decided to charge the plane spotters with espionage. Thus began a saga of muddle and misinformation, which has made Greece look, as their own press put it, “chaotic”.
The farce began when the plane spotters’ Greek lawyer assured his clients and the European media, who had hurried to cover the story, that it was all a misunderstanding which he would quickly sort out. Exactly the opposite happened. Greek judges took an increasingly serious view of the visitors’ behavior and recommended that they be treated with the full severity of the law reserved for spies.
By now the British and Dutch governments were involved, with representations being made at ever higher diplomatic levels to the Athens government. However, Greek judges refused to be moved by pressure from the government to throw the case out, or at least to reduce the charges to the level of misdemeanors.
It took over a month before the judicial process finally tossed a file onto the desk of the public prosecutor, recommending that the plane spotters be tried for espionage, which carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years. It was only at this point that the government’s lenient view could be taken into consideration. To everyone’s relief the spying allegations have been abandoned and the foreigners bailed to appear on lesser charges which at most will carry a fine.
However, to the very end, the Greek justice system insisted on having something of its own way. The bail office refused to accept a bail check from the British Embassy in Athens until the British foreign minister had to take the extraordinary step of calling the bail office in person. In a final demonstration of its power, the actual release of the plane spotters was delayed because all the prison guards were having their siesta.
But apart from the eccentricity of plane spotters, what this absurd incident has demonstrated is what many Greeks have termed “British hypocrisy”. We can iamgine the response Jack Straw would give the Greeks if they requested him to involve himself in a case against a dozen Greeks which was going through the British legal system.
What is clearly not appreciated is that though the wheels of Greek justice ground slowly and creakily, grind they did. The foreigners should have counted themselves lucky as they flew home to their countries. A Greek arrested on a charge of similar seriousness would think himself very lucky indeed if the matter were resolved in just over a month.
