Ballistics tests on cartridges collected from the crime scene have linked the dawn shooting of journalist Socrates Giolias to the terror group "Revolutionaries' Sect", police announced on Monday.

   The ambush killing was quickly condemned by the country's political leaders.

   Giolias, 37, general director of the private Thema 98.9 FM radio station and long-time former associate of investigative journalist Makis Triantafyllopoulos, was riddled with bullets outside his home in Ilioupolis by unidentified individuals in the early hours of Monday morning.

   A ballistics investigation of cartridges collected from the scene of the shooting revealed that both weapons have been used in all three past attacks by the terror group "Revolutionaries' Sect".

   Police found a total of 16 9mm cartridges, of which 13 came from the same gun used in the June 2009 murder of 41-year-old counter-terrorism police officer Nektarios Savvas, who was gunned down in Patissia while guarding a key female witness in the trial of the urban guerrilla group "Revolutionary Popular Struggle". The woman had been in a witness protection programme since 2002. Officer Savvas was also riddled with bullets in the attack.

   The remaining three were fired from a different 9mm pistol that had also been used in the Patissia attack, as well as in the armed attack on Korydallos police station in February 3 2009 and an attack on Alter television station on February 17 the same year.

   The cartridges fired by the specific gun are also a match for a cartridge found on the gravestone of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a teenage boy shot by two police guards in December 2008, on the day after the attack on the Korydallos police station, along with a proclamation claiming responsibility for the specific attack.

   According to a statement to police by Giolias' wife, an unknown man rang the doorbell of their second-floor apartment at about 5:20 a.m. and when Giolias opened the door the man told him that the alarm of his car, parked outside the apartment building, had gone off.

   When Giolias descended to the building entrance where he had parked his car, the gunmen were waiting in ambush and shot him several times as he came out of the elevator, killing him on the spot.

   The perpetrators, tentatively believed to be three, fled in a car.

   At around 7:00 a.m. a burned car was found approximately 1.5 kilometers from the murder scene, and police believe it was the killers' getaway car. The car had been stolen from nearby Alimos two days earlier (Saturday, July 7) and its theft had been reported by the owner to the local police station.

   The motives of the killing are still unknown, and police are examining all possibilities.

   According to an eye-witness account, the perpetrators were at least three and were wearing uniforms, possibly of a security company or the municipal police.

   Based on the method used and ferocity of the attack, police initially surmised that it was a contract killing, since the attack was well-organised.

   Giolias' wife, who has suffered an intense shock, and the couple's 3-year-old child were in the apartment at the time of the killing.

   Reactions

   The government expressed its strong condemnation of the "cowardly, cold-blooded murder", and expressed its condolences to the victim's family.

   "Democracy and freedom of speech cannot be muzzled, terrorised or threatened," government spokesman George Petalotis said, adding that the authorities have already taken action to arrest the perpetrators and bring them to justice.

   Petalotis disassociated the killing from "social violence", warning that "if we adopt such an idea, it would be tantamount to lending legitimacy to what happened".

   In a written statement, parliament president Philippos Petsalnikos, on behalf of the House, expressed rage and grief over the killing, and conveyed the MPs' condolences to Giolias' family.

   Main opposition New Democracy (ND) party press officer Panos Panagiotopoulos, a former journalist himself, said the "cold-blooded murder of journalist Socrates Giolias creates sentiments of abhorrence in the public and shocks the journalistic family, of which he was an eminent member".

   He added that Greek society was expecting the authorities to quickly solve "this very dark case" and "locate and arrest the murderers as speedily as possible".

   The Communist Party of Greece (KKE) condemned "the heinous murder" and expressed its condolences to the deceased's family.

   Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) leader George Karatzaferis said that "today is a sad day because not only a courageous journalist was murdered but journalism itself".

   "Socrates Giolias' murder was an act of intimidation, a death contract signed by those who were displeased with Socrates' revealing reporting," Karatzaferis added.

   The Coalition of the Left, Movements and Ecology (SYN) said the "gangster-style" murder has caused shock among journalists but also more generally as well, and expressed its condolences to the deceased's family.

   The Panhellenic Federation of Journalists' Unions (POESY) strongly condemned the killing, adding that the execution of the killing employed the most barbarous method witnessed by Greek society, and renders imperative the immediate and drastic action of the authorities to solve the crime and bring the perpetrators to justice.

   POESY also expressed condolences to Giolias' family, stressing that it was at their side.