"Kathimerini"

‘Huge’ influx of guns tests police

Police sources have told Kathimerini that “huge amounts of weapons of all kinds” smuggled into Greece from Albania are in the possession of criminal rings and drug barons.The police also believe that some of the heavy weaponry – such as Scorpion submachine guns and Kalashnikov assault rifles – discovered in the suspected hideouts of terrorism suspects may be the spoils of raids on military facilities in Albania in the 1990s.

As for the more modern weapons found at the hideouts, such as Glock semiautomatic pistols, police have not ruled out the possibility that these were procured from the same batch as the two 9-millimeter pistols linked to the Sect of Revolutionaries, the country’s deadliest guerrilla organization.

According to police in Attica, some 10,000 legally registered pistols and revolvers account for just a tenth of such weapons on the market. It is unclear what the corresponding figures are for other weapons.