Nikos Pappas, a Greek admiral against dictatorship

The Portuguese dictatorship laughable lived his epic moment when the liner Santa Maria was kidnapped in 1961 by a group of Democrats, including some officers, in an act of rebellion against the fascist dictator Antonio Salazar, but also against the Spanish Francisco Franco. It was the epic of the Santa Liberdade, as pirates renamed the ship, and a cry for attention to the world-obviously silenced by the respective regimes, on what was happening in the Peninsula. The Greek dictatorship of the colonels (1967-1974) knew a moment of excitement similar to Velos Mutiny (Arrow), a Navy destroyer in 1973 participated in a NATO exercise in Italian waters, and whose commander, Admiral Nikos Pappas, swerved to alert the world to the lack of democracy in their country. Pappas died on day 5 at a hospital in Athens, victim of cancer, aged 83.


Inform international news agencies of the feat, and do so through a payphone, as did Pappas that May 23, shows what could be handmade and arduous struggle for democracy only a few decades ago. After participating in multinational maneuvers between mainland Italy and Sardinia, Pappas, seconded by his officers and all the crew, refused to return to Greece. All had been reported days before the arrest of several fellow soldiers by the regime then in power in Athens and, convinced of the impossibility of forging any democratic movement inside Greece, decided to strike beyond its borders.

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