political prisoners in the jails and concentration camps of Greece.
This figure appears to be conservative. On April 28 General Patakos declared that there were 5,421 persons under arrest, of whom 780 had been shipped to the island of Yaros.
But on May 9, the same General Patakos, who holds the post of minister of the interior and who is one of the key military men who plotted the April 21 coup d'état, gave a press conference the figure of 6,138 on Yaros alone.
"I just came from the island of Yaros," the general told the correspondents. "I went there in a helicopter with the minister of public order. At present on Yaros there are 6,148 detainees, of whom 235 are women. But I can state that more than half of these detainees will be released because there are many innocent people among them arrested without reason.'
The "guilty" ones arrested "with reason" are, in actuality, guilty only of having political views different from those of the reactionary generals who toppled the government in order to block an election that would only have been won by an ordinary bourgeois party.
To sort out the "guilty" from the "nonguilty," an ad hoc commission has been set up, said’General Patakos. Those whom the ad hoc commission decides to hold will be sorted out in various categories and sent to different islands.
The sorting out job is scheduled to be completed within ten days, the general added.
He did not reveal the names of the members of the Inquisition which will sit in judgment on the 6,138 detainees.
The general waxed eloquent about the conditions that have been provided for the political prisoners herded onto the island, a notorious hellhole under the Metaxas dictatorship, under the Nazi occupation and under the dictatorship fostered by the Truman Doctrine.
"The site is idyllic," said Gen. Patakos. "The detainees live in tents or little houses which need repairing. A dispensary assures them medical care. There are two military doctors who are helped by medical students among the detainees. At present there are fourteen sick people, all of them very well cared for."
The military junta have banned mini skirts and beards. The Western press is satiric about this, but is saying less and less on the tragedy of Greece again converted into a stifling prison. After all this is normal for a country ruled by an American satellite government.