Justice in Salonika

In his grey suit, green tie, silk shirt and crepe-soled shoes, 38-year-old Gregory Staktopoulos looked more like a clothier's model than a working journalist--or a man on trial for murder. Last week, in a heavily guarded courtroom in Salonika, Greece, he fixed his gaze for a moment on the icon of Christ set high on the wall. Then, in a quaking voice, Defendant Staktopoulos told how CBS Correspondent George Polk was murdered a year ago in Salonika Bay.

Staktopoulos, onetime Communist and part-time correspondent for Reuters news agency, denied that he himself had killed Polk. But he admitted that, on party orders, he had promised to help get Polk an interview with Communist Chieftain Markos Vafiades (later purged) and had led him to the red and blue rowboat that was to take them to Marko's headquarters.

A Bullet. When the boat was well out in the bay, Staktopoulos testified, two Communists, Adam Mouzenides and Evangelos Vasvanas, persuaded Polk to let himself be bound hand & foot and blindfolded "for security-reasons." Then Mouzenides shot Polk in the back of the head. "Folk's ghost pursues me night & day," cried Staktopoulos. "I see him crumbling dead to the bottom of the boat."

It was not a plot by the Athens government, Staktopoulos swore. Said he: "I accuse and denounce [the Communists]." He said their motive was to pin the murder on the Greek government, arouse U.S. public opinion and thereby force suspension of U.S. military and economic aid.

As part of the plot, Staktopoulos had mailed Folk's identity card to the police so they would know he was missing. Police traced the card and arrested him. They also arrested his 68-year-old mother, who had addressed the letter, and charged her with being an accessory to the murder.

A Toothpick. As he shakily finished his confession, Staktopoulos tried to convince the jury of Greek businessmen that he had been only an unwitting bystander. Said he: "The fact is, I'm a coward." Rejoined one juror: "You seem like a man who is knocked down by a toothpick, but doesn't stagger under a barrel of sand."

After three hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Staktopoulos of complicity in the murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment. His mother, who was acquitted, wept. Staktopoulos cried too. Communists Mouzenides and Vasvanas, who have never been captured, were convicted in absentia and sentenced to death. (According to the guerrilla radio, both were killed in action.)

Major General William J. Donovan, onetime head of OSS who attended the trial as a representative of a committee of U.S. newsmen, reported that it was "honestly and efficiently conducted." William Polk, younger brother of the murdered man, made the obvious point that the case left "unanswered questions." He hoped the investigation would go on until Mouzenides and Vasvanas were arrested and proved guilty by testimony beyond the Staktopoulos statement--or until proof of their deaths closed the case.

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