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Greece is shocked with the brutal murder of Sokratis Golias – a journalist, known more to his colleagues than the general public – and the question “Why” flashes in each broadcasting and  reportage text. Golias is considered one of the founders of one of the most popular Greek blogs “Troktiko” or “rodent”. Blog, which in recent weeks, the readers connected with a campaign against the so-called “anarchists” in Greece - in other words, vandals and hooligans, evil, aggressive and uncontrollable people, who are burning bank branches, vandalizing in downtown Athens and killing policemen and journalists.

It is going to be proved how Sokratis Golias himself has engaged in any fight against anarchists and whether this has any connection with his murder. What we certainly know now is that the director of 98.9 Theme radio station was shot in cold blood outside his home in the Athens suburb Iliupolis.

Three men dressed as policemen called the bell at 5:20 am and told him that someone tried to steal his car which was parked in front of the housing block. Sokratis came down to see what happened. The moment he went out of the elevator and opened the door of the entrance, he was shot by 13 bullets. 16 cartridges were found on the scene, and according to the preliminary information from the forensic medical examination, Golias was in the middle of crossfire. The Coroner stated later that the victim was attacked frontally and turned to get back into the building to protect himself from the fire. Then the killers shot in his back.

Neighbors have seen a motorcyclist passing by on the street very often and looking at the housing block for hours in the last days. But they suggested he was a policeman who guarded the journalist. According to their information again, the killers escaped in a dark-coloured car after the murder. The police found later a burnt vehicle about a kilometer and a half away from the place of murder. It was declared stolen two days ago. 

The Homicide Department at the Athens police investigated the case by early afternoon as all evidence showed organized plan of murder and mafia modus operandi of the perpetrators, whose faces were not covered during the shooting.

After ballistic testing, however, it became clear that the perpetrators shot with two guns belonging to the terrorist organization Sect of Revolutionaries and the anti-terrorism department took the investigation. The terrorists used these guns in their attacks against the police station in the Athens suburb Koridalos, in the bombing of Alter TV and in the murder of the policeman Nektarios Savas, who was shot with 27 bullets a year ago.  

The name of the organization appeared for the first time after the protests that followed the murder of the 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropulos by a police officer in early December 2008. The members of the Sect of Revolutionaries use particularly violent threats, directed also to media representatives, in the manifests, which they issue after every attack.

Sokratis Golias was close associate and editor of the television broadcasts of the most famous Greek investigating journalist Makis Triandafilopulos for 17 years. They often provoked the public opinion and held politicians and representatives of the Greek social elite at pressure with their apocalyptic reports, often filmed with hidden cameras. Golias left the team of Triandafilopulos two years ago because of mutual disagreements relating to the publication of an intimate photographs of a Greek politician with his subordinate.  

In 2008 he started to work as a special advisor to the businessman Dimitris Kondominas –  shareholder and former owner of Alpha TV channel. Then he became director of the 98.9 Theme radio station. He is considered a founding member of the most popular online blog in Greece Troktiko, something he himself continuously rebutted.

Colleagues of Sokratis Golias and his lawyer argue that the journalist received indirect threats, but did not pay attention to them. He had no guards and lived modestly. His scared wife went out on the balcony in the fatal night to see what happened to their car and witnessed the brutal murder of her husband. “There is no longer boundary between terrorism and organized crime in Greece after the murder of Sokratis Golias,” experts commented.