Spokesman: shocked by Karamanlis’ remarks on Helios air crash

Government Spokesman Vassilis Palmas said on Monday that he was shocked by a revelation by the Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis regarding an air crash in 2005, in which all 121 passengers and crew were killed.

The spokesman was referring to a crash of an HELIOS Boeing 737 in August 2005, flying from Larnaca to Prague via Athens, which crashed on the mountainside of Grammatikos, north of the Greek capital killing everybody on board, most of them Cypriot holidaymakers.

Asked what he would not wish to see happen again, in a second term in office, if reelected in Sunday’s poll in Greece, Karamanlis replied: ”What I would not like to happen to me again is for the Minister of Defence to call me and say that I have ten minutes to decide if I should shoot down a passenger plane with 121 people on board, including many young children.”

As the HELIOS aircraft was flying over Athens, without apparently anybody in control, there was a strong suspicion that this was a terrorist attack, hence the initial comment by the Greek Defence Minister to the Prime Minister about shooting down the commercial airliner.

“It was shocking to hear what Mr. Karamanlis disclosed on Sunday and we all know those tragic events,” Palmas said about the revelation, adding that Cyprus President Tassos Papadopoulos was being fully informed about the situation as it unfolded on the day of the crash.

Invited to say if President Papadopoulos knew that Karamanlis had ten minutes to decide the fate of the airplane, Palmas said President Papadopoulos was fully aware of everything that was going on.

”I am not in a position to go into any detail, but it is a fact that this question was raised at the time,” he added.