Athens.- ANA-MPA

“Democracy is always strict with vigilantes,” Alternate Minister of Citizen Protection Nikos Toskas said on Saturday in statements to the Athens Macedonian News Agency (ANA) following his visit to former Prime Minister Loukas Papademos.

Toskas was accompanied by the chief of Hellenic Police Constantinos Tsouvalas.

Papademos, his driver and one other man in his security were injured in a suspected letter bomb blast that occurred while the three were riding in the former Greek premier’s armoured car on Thursday evening in downtown Athens.

Meanwhile, it was confirmed that the booby trapped envelope had undergone security screening at the parliament and the sender has been identified.

Asked if there was a security gap, the minister replied: “We will fill any (security) gaps that may have existed.”

“The government and the police are working systematically to bring to justice the perpetrators of the terrorist attack,” Toskas underlined.

According to “Kathimerini”, one of the two Bank of Greece employees who had been with Papademos when the bomb went off in his car told police on Friday that he had collected the envelope from the offices of the Academy of Athens, of which Papademos is president, and subsequently checked it in the x-ray machine of the central bank, which did not indicate anything suspicious.

Police sources, however, appeared uncertain about the account of the employee, who has been in charge of Papademos’s security detail for several years. One of the reasons for their doubts was the account of another former premier, Antonis Samaras, after he visited Papademos in hospital. Samaras said Papademos told him the envelope had been delivered to his home in Psychico, not to the Academy of Athens.

According to one police source, there were two suspicious envelopes – one delivered to Papademos’s home and one to the Academy of Athens. The source did not determine which of the two envelopes contained the bomb or what became of the other envelope.

A Bank of Greece source indicated on Friday that the envelope given to Papademos had first been passed through the x-ray machine in the Parliament building, but staff at the House rebuffed that claim.