Dimitrios Ioannidis

Dimitrios Ioannidis (Greek: Δημήτριος Ιωαννίδης [ðiˈmitri.os i.oaˈniðis]; 13 March 1923 – 16 August 2010),¹ also known as Dimitris Ioannidis and as The Invisible Dictator, was a Greek military officer and one of the leading figures in the junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. For the last 10 months of the junta's rule, he was the de facto leader of the country though never holding a formal government post. Ioannidis was considered a "purist and a moralist, a type of Greek Gaddafi".²

Early life and education

He was born on March 13, 1923 in Athens and came from a relatively wealthy family. He was descended from a family from Ioannina.³⁴⁵

During the Axis occupation of Greece he was a member of the National Republican Greek League (EDES) resistance group. After the war he studied at the Hellenic Military Academy and complemented his military education by studying at the Infantry School, the War School, and the School of Atomic-Chemical-Biological Warfare.⁶ As an army officer he took part also in the Greek civil war.

Ioannidis had begun his career as an officer in Napoleon Zervas's guerrilla forces.⁶

Involvement in the military junta (1967-1974)

Ioannidis took an active part in planning and executing the coup d'état of (he was Director of the ), but despite his great power he preferred to stay in the shadows, allowing to take the limelight. Ioannidis became chief of the (ESA) which he developed into a feared paramilitary force of more than 20,000 men. The ESA men brutally hunted down and political dissidents. They also became notorious for insulting their nominal superiors, the Generals of the Greek Army, who were generally royalist or republican and opposed to the junta leadership. His obituary described Ioannidis as "the brutal head of military security during the Greek colonels' dictatorship" who "oversaw the creation of EAT/ESA, the special interrogation section of the military police, at whose headquarters opponents of the regime, both civilian and military, were systematically tortured."