Stylianos Pattakos

Stylianos Pattakos was a Greek military man, one of the masterminds of the Junta behind the coup d’ etat of April 21, 1967 that overthrew the government of Panagiotis Kanellopoulos and ruled Greece until 1974.

He was born in 1912 in the small village of Agia Paraskevi in Rethymnon prefecture on the island of Crete and studied in Greek military school. He was commissioned an officer and saw action in World War II.

After the war, he eventually rose to the rank of Brigadier General and was assigned to the armoured divisions of the Attica plain. It was then that he met Colonel George Papadopoulos and Brigadier General Nikolaos Makarezos.

On November 25, 1973, politically far-right Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannidis overthrew Papadopoulos and Pattakos found himself sidelined. The following year, the 7-year Junta came to an end in the aftermath of the invasion of Cyprus.The threesome (Papadopoulos, Pattakos and Makarezos) planned and executed the coup on the night of April 20 to April 21, 1967, claiming political anomaly had made them to do so. For his trouble, Pattakos was awarded with the Ministry of the Interior.

The newly-restored democratic government of Konstantinos Karamanlis put junta officials on trial for rebellion and treason and Pattakos was sentenced to death. That was later commuted to life imprisonment and Pattakos spent the next 15 years behind bars.

Pattakos was released in 1990 due to health reasons and has been living on the outside ever since on one leave extension after another. He claims to have found religion but has never shown remorse for his actions.

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