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Georgios Papadopoulos

George Papadopoulos was born in May 5 1919 in Peloponnese and died in June 27 1999 of cancer at the age of 80 inside the prison. He was the leader of the right-wing military junta which overthrew the Greek government on April 21 1967 and tortured and jailed thousands of Greeks. After abolishing the monarchy in 1973 he declared himself president of the republic and as a consequence he was overthrown in November of 1973 with the help of Dimitrios Ioannides, the chief of the military police following the brutal crackdown on students demonstrating at the Athens Politechnic school. After the fall of the second dictatorship Papadopoulos was tried and found guilty of treason and sentenced to sentenced to death, but the then-ruling conservative government commuted the sentence to life in prison. In 1984 he attempted a political comeback from behind bars as head of the National Political Union Party (EPEN), which won a seat in European elections. Till his death, he never regretted his role in the coup and insisted that he saved Greece from communism. He was technically the first member of the CIA to be the leader of a European country.