ATHENS – Greek riot police clashed with some 60 supporters of jailed Nov. 17 terrorist assassin Dimitris Koufodinas, on another hunger strike, wanting to show their solidarity with the killer, some 21 detained.

Police had to use tear gas to break up the crowd during the COVID-19 pandemic second lockdown after the demonstration erupted in scuffles outside Athens University.

Koufodinas hasn’t eaten for several weeks  – a tactic he uses regularly to demand preferential treatment that ended when New Democracy took power in July, 2019 over the Radical Left SYRIZA which was sympathetic to him.

Under the leftists, Koufodinas, who was behind the murders of some 23 people over the years, including five Americans attached to the US Embassy, had enjoyed a half dozen vacations from jail.

He also was transferred from a high-security prison in Athens to a rural detention farm that provided easier terms for him before New Democracy put him back in jail in a high-security facility in Domokos, central Greece.

Faced with that and knowing he can’t go to the farm again, he wants back to the high-security Korydallos Prison in Athens where he had been in the first place, his supporters backing him in that demand and his hunger strike.

The demo was also reportedly attended by Koufodinas’ wife, Angeliki Sotiropoulou, the paper said, but it wasn’t indicated if she had also been taken into custody at the time.