Stephen Saunders ( British Army officer ) Brigadier Stephen Saunders ( 1947 - 8 June 2000 ) , the British military attaché in Athens , was killed on 8 June 2000 by motorcycle gunmen who were members of Revolutionary Organization 17 November ( 17N ) . Saunders was buried with a Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone in Melbury Osmund churchyard in Dorset , close to where he had previously lived . Assassination and investigation . Saunders was attacked and shot dead by two men on a motorcycle while driving through Athens traffic on his way to work at the British Embassy , Athens at 7 : 48 am . 17N claimed credit for the killing in a proclamation originally dated March 2000 and published in Eleftherotypia on 9 June 2000 . The group charged , falsely , that Saunders was an RAF wing commander involved in the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia . In fact he was an army brigadier with broad peacekeeping experience completely unconnected with the Kosovo War . 17N revealed in a second proclamation dated 11 December 2000 , also published in Eleftherotypia , that it had erroneously believed Saunders ' s embassy - issued Rover was armored . Therefore the killers used a Heckler & Koch G3 assault rifle they had stolen from a Greek police station in August 1988 . That gun jammed after one shot , and the killer [ s ] fired four more shots with a . 45 Colt M1911 pistol . Saunders died in the hospital shortly afterward . Witnesses told police they saw a shorter man behind a taller man , both helmeted , on a white Enduro motorcycle . Police recovered a stolen green Modenas Kris 111cc scooter with stolen license plates parked nearby . The investigation that followed was driven by an unprecedented level of co - operation between Greek and UK Police services , with support from the U . S . FBI and CIA . Scotland Yard provided training and sent Greek - speaking police officers to compile and restudy the fragmentary evidence compiled since 17N began its operations in 1975 . Heather Saunders made a highly effective televised appeal for help in finding the murderers . Family members of 17N victims formed an advocacy group Os Edo ( Ως Εδώ - - " Up to Here " ) that lobbied for a tougher Greek anti - terrorism law , passed as Law 2928 / 2001 . The lengthy investigation identified suspects for membership in 17N but produced no evidence usable in court . On 29 June 2002 , 17N member Savvas Xiros ( hitherto unknown to police ) was gravely injured when a time bomb he was planting exploded prematurely in Piraeus . He agreed to confess that he had driven the scooter , with fellow member Dimitris Koufodinas carrying the G3 . Before the 2003 trial of 19 suspected members of 17N , Xiros retracted his confession . Both he and Koufodinas were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder . An activist against the Greek military junta of 1967 – 1974 named Alexandros Giotopoulos , living underground under the pseudonym Mihalis Oikonomou since 1971 , was convicted as 17N ' s leader and thus the moral instigator of the murder , while Savvas ' s brother Vasilis was convicted as the accomplice who helped preposition the vehicles . Further claims . In his 2009 memoir " Reluctant Spy " ( Bantam ) , former CIA officer John Kiriakou wrote of driving past Saunders ' s blood - stained car the morning of 8 June . He claimed that the reason for his abrupt departure from Greece in August 2000 was the discovery that Greek terrorist group 17 November ( 17N ) had been stalking him instead of Saunders . He quoted the 17N proclamation taking credit for the Saunders murder : “ We saw the big spy , but he was in an armored car and we knew that he was armed . So we elected to carry out the sentence on the war criminal Saunders . ” ( p83 ) However , the sentence actually reads : " The moment of the operation , bottled up at the traffic light immediately in front , was an American armed mega - spy of the CIA , while about 100 meters back was [ shipowner ] Vardinogiannis with his armed escort . " This proclamation was published in Eleftherotypia on 13 Dec 2000 , four months after Kiriakou ' s departure from Greece . Kiriakou , who described himself as driving far behind Saunders that morning , could not have been the " mega - spy " 17N described . The original proclamation makes clear that 17N was intent on a British target . Conspiracy theories regarding 17N abound , often spread by adherents of the Communist Party of Greece ( KKE ) to discredit potential rivals to the KKE ' s role as revolutionary vanguard party . The evidence presented at the 2003 17N trial and 2007 appeal appears to confirm the insistence of 17N members that they were exactly what they claimed to be , revolutionary communists engaged in " armed propaganda . " One of many attempts to implicate the U . S . government as the sponsor of 17N appeared in December 2005 , when Kleanthis Grivas published an article in " To Proto Thema " , a Greek Sunday newspaper . He claimed that " Sheepskin " , the Greek version of Gladio , NATO ' s stay - behind paramilitary capability during the Cold War , carried out the assassination of CIA station chief Richard Welch in Athens in 1975 and also the assassination of Stephen Saunders more than a decade after the Cold War ended . This charge was denied by the US State Department , who responded that " the Greek terrorist organization ' 17 November ' was responsible for both assassinations " , and noted that Grivas ' s central piece of evidence was a disinformation document of Soviet origin ( the so - called " Westmoreland Field Manual " ) which the State department , as well as a Congressional inquiry had dismissed as a Soviet forgery . It should be noted the documents make no specific mention of Greece , 17 November , nor Welch . The State Department also highlighted the fact that , in the case of Richard Welch , " Grivas bizarrely accuses the CIA of playing a role in the assassination of one of its own senior officials " as well as the Greek government ' s statements to the effect that the " stay behind " network had been dismantled in 1988 . Legacy . Since 2001 St . Catherine ’ s British Embassy School in Athens has been awarding the Stephen Saunders Award for Good Citizenship to a pupil with outstanding contribution to school life , society and the support of others . Past recipients include Kevin Saric , Krisztian Goodwin , Yasmin Kotopoulis , Ashira Gailor , Kimberly Saric , Rallia Fafalios , Christos Daskagiannis and Filippos Letsas .