Stephen Saunders was a British army brigadier general serving as the United Kingdom’s defense attaché in Athens at the time of his assassination by Revolutionary Organization 17 November in March 2000. The hit was originally intended for John Kiriakou, the Central Intelligence Agency officer working the 17 November case at the U.S. embassy; the group elected to kill Saunders instead because Kiriakou’s armored vehicle and personal arms made the operation too risky.[1]
Saunders is described as “a great guy — just funny and fun and gregarious and outgoing, the life of the party kind of guy.” His wife and two teenage daughters had recently arrived in Athens with him; the family lived in the residence caddy-corner from the Kiriakous, with backyards touching.[2][3]
Diplomatic cocktail party
At a diplomatic cocktail party in early 2000, shortly after his arrival in Athens, Saunders publicly teased Kiriakou about the latter’s fully armored BMW 540 — the first 540 in Greece, requiring its larger engine to bear the weight of the armor and so heavy it could only be insured through a German company.[4] Saunders said:
You Americans — you’re so paranoid about security. This is an EU country, it’s a NATO country. What are you so afraid of?
Kiriakou’s reply: “You Brits live in a dreamworld if you think because they have palm trees and pretty beaches that they’re not going to kill you if they get the chance. Take my word for it — if they do get the chance, they’re going to kill you.” Saunders was assassinated two weeks later.[5]
Assassination
The hit took place in heavy morning traffic on Kifissias Avenue, the main artery from the suburban hills down to the U.S. embassy. Saunders was driving alone in his white Rover, a vehicle bearing a license plate beginning with the prefix YBH — the British Embassy’s plate range. The American and British embassies had both elected to forgo diplomatic plates in Greece on the assessment that diplomatic plates were too alerting; instead, both embassies’ vehicles bore distinct three-letter prefix ranges (American: YHB; British: YBH).[6][7]
The attackers used 17 November’s standard motorcycle-team method. The lead shooter fired the Welch .45 — used in every 17 November hit — through the driver’s-side window. A second operative on the back of the motorcycle then fired an armor-piercing round from a long gun that severed Saunders’s right hand from his body, leaving it on the floor of the passenger side. He was killed instantly.[8][9]
A taxi driver and a motorist in an adjacent car pulled Saunders from his vehicle, placed him in the taxi, and rushed him to the Red Cross Hospital. He was dead on arrival.[10]
Kiriakou as witness
Kiriakou, en route to the embassy through the same traffic, reached Saunders’s stationary white Rover before the British Embassy had been informed of the attack. Observing the YBH plate, the shot-out window, and “so much blood in this car he couldn’t have lived,” he telephoned his CIA station to report the death. “There’s so much blood in this car — he couldn’t have lived.”[8][11]
Manifesto and consequences
Several months after the killing, 17 November mailed a manifesto to a Greek left-wing newspaper claiming responsibility. The manifesto disclosed that the group had identified John Kiriakou — “the big spy” — as the day’s original target, but had elected to kill Saunders instead because Kiriakou was in an armored car and known to be armed:
We saw the big spy, but he was in an armored car and we knew he was armed, so we elected to carry out the revolutionary sentence on the war criminal Saunders.[1]
Within hours of the manifesto’s publication, Kiriakou and his family were exfiltrated from Greece. One car took Kiriakou to the airport; a second car collected his wife from home and his children from school. The family departed Athens on the noon Delta flight to New York. An embassy team subsequently entered the Kiriakou residence, packed the household possessions in boxes, and shipped them to the United States.[12][13]
The unknown observer
Among photographs developed by Kiriakou after the family’s exit from Greece was an image taken approximately a week before Saunders’s killing, during a visit from Kiriakou’s parents. In the background of the photograph — a candid of Kiriakou’s mother holding his two young sons — was a red car parked across from the residence containing an unidentified man looking directly into the camera. The license plate, run through Greek services after the fact, turned out to have been stolen.[14]
The working hypothesis adopted by CIA personnel was that 17 November had been surveilling Saunders — who was publicly visible at diplomatic events and on television — when they noticed the YHB-prefix American embassy plate on the neighboring armored vehicle and identified it as a CIA target of opportunity.[15]