Greece's dark past is uncovered after 33 bodies are found in a civil war-era mass grave

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Workers were installing benches at a park in the ancient Greek port city of Thessaloniki when their excavator pushed brown soil off a fragile white skull.

They turned off the motorized equipment and set to work with pickaxes and shovels. The crew found two skeletons, then more. By March, 33 sets of bones lay in a tight cluster of unmarked burial pits in the shadow of a Byzantine fortress.

“We found many bullets in the heads, the skulls,” supervising engineer Haris Charismiadis said, standing on earth overturned by four months of digging.

It's common to find ancient remains or objects in Greece. But hulking Yedi Kule castle was a prison where Communist sympathizers were tortured and executed during Greece's 1946–49 Civil War. Tens of thousands died in the early Cold War-era battles between Western-backed government forces and left-wing insurgents, a brutal conflict with assassination squads, child abductions and mass displacements.

Greece's archaeological service cleared the site for development because the bones are less than 100 years old. But authorities in Neapolis-Sykies, a suburb of the coastal city of Thessaloniki, pressed on with excavation, saying the chance find has “great historical and national importance.”

Descendants have been coming to the site in recent weeks, leaving flowers and asking authorities to conduct DNA testing "so they can retrieve the remains of their grandfather, great-grandfather or uncle,” said Simos Daniilidis, who has served as Neapolis-Sykies' mayor since 1994.

As many as 400 Yedi Kule prisoners were executed, according to historians and the Greek Communist Party. Items found with the bodies — a woman’s shoe, a handbag, a ring — offer glimpses into the lives cut short.

For the families of slain pro-Communist Greeks, the find in the Park of National Resistance is reviving a wartime legacy kept dormant to avoid reigniting old animosities. The small site has become Greece's first Civil War mass grave to be exhumed.

Government forces executed 19-year-old Agapios Sachinis after he refused to sign a declaration renouncing his political beliefs.

“These are not simple matters,” his namesake nephew said during a recent visit to the site.

“It’s about carrying inside you not just courage, but values and dignity you won’t compromise — not even to save your own life,” said Agapios Sachinis, 78.

A retired Communist city council member, Sachinis was imprisoned in the 1960s for his political activity during the dictatorship. Today, Greece's Communist Party belongs to the political mainstream, largely thanks to its role in the country’s WWII resistance.

If Sachinis' uncle’s remains are identified, he said, he will cremate them and keep the ashes at his home.

“I want Agapios close to me, at least while I’m alive,” he said.

Greece’s Civil War began in the wake of World War II. Coming after continent-wide destruction, it quickly lost international attention but the conflict marked a turning point: U.S. President Harry Truman’s policy of anti-communist intervention — the Truman Doctrine — was presented to Congress in 1947 as a means to direct funds and military support to Greece.

Etched on the newly excavated bones in Thessaloniki, then, is a playbook that went on to produce decades of repression, societal divisions and more unmarked graves in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Governments later addressing the Cold War-era abuses and atrocities faced a painful choice: To unearth the past — as attempted with investigative commissions in Eastern Europe and many Latin American countries — or suppress it for fear of fresh division.

Greek emergency laws were gradually lifted and only fully abolished in 1989. Records of summary trials and executions were never made public. No political force pushed for the excavation of suspected burial sites.

Politicians still use highly cautious language when addressing the past and the Thessaloniki discovery was met with a subdued public reaction. The find has not been directly addressed by the country’s center-right government – a reminder that many Greeks still find it easier to walk past the country’s ghosts than confront them.

Decades ago, the neighborhood park in Thessaloniki — a densely populated port city of a million with ruins from the ancient Greek, Roman and Ottoman eras, with historically strong Balkan and Jewish influences — was a field on the outskirts of the city. Today, it's frequented by retirees and ringed by apartment buildings filled with middle-class families. During construction, residents whispered that bones had been discovered when foundations were laid, but no inquiry was conducted.

Executions by army firing squads extended into the 1950s and were publicly announced, but graves were unmarked and secret. Author and historian Spyros Kouzinopoulos, a Thessaloniki native, spent decades researching the executions at Yedi Kule, including the indignities endured by prisoners in their final hours.

After a military tribunal issued a death sentence, the chief guard would take the condemned prisoner to solitary confinement in tiny cells barely big enough to stand. Many would use their last hours to write letters to their families. At dawn, the chief guard and two others would retrieve the prisoner and hand them over to the firing squad. Most were loaded onto trucks to avoid attracting public attention. Sometimes they were led to their death on foot.

Most of the victims were barely adults — youth Kouzinopoulos called “flowers of their generation.”

Two 17-year-old schoolgirls, Efpraxia Nikolaidou and Eva Kourouzidou, were executed while wearing their uniforms, he said.

“It shook me to the core,” Kouzinopoulos said.

City officials are taking steps to conduct DNA testing on the remains, and urging families of the missing to submit genetic material. That way, the bodies can be identified and returned to relatives.

Agapios Sachinis, the septuagenarian whose uncle was executed, is among those eager to provide DNA.

Mayor Daniilidis has ordered an expansion of the dig to other parts of the park in coming weeks.

“We must send a message," he said. "Never again.”

AP journalist Derek Gatopoulos in Athens, Greece, contributed to this report.

FILE - An officer reads execution orders to four condemned youths at a military installation near Athens, Greece, Oct. 29, 1947, as members of a firing squad stand with their backs to the camera. The youths, all from Peristeri, an Athens suburb, were convicted of aiding a Communist rebellion, conspiracy and a slaying. (AP Photo, File)

Author and historian Spyros Kouzinopoulos holds a newspaper announcing the Sept. 15, 1947, court ruling to execute 52 people being held at Yedi Kule prison, in Thessaloniki, Greece, Saturday, April 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Author and historian Spyros Kouzinopoulos holds a newspaper announcing the Sept. 15, 1947, court ruling to execute 52 people being held at Yedi Kule prison, which is now a museum, in Thessaloniki, Greece, on Saturday, April 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

A girl holds a flower as people sit on a wall outside Yedi Kule prison, which is now a museum, in Thessaloniki, Greece, Friday, April 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Civil engineer Ηaris Charismiadis leads the redevelopment of a square that uncovered mass graves with remains believed to be dozens of prisoners executed during or after the Greek Civil War as members of the Greek Communist Party visit the site in Thessaloniki, Greece, Saturday, April 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Flowers lie at the site where mass graves containing remains believed to have belonged to dozens of prisoners executed during or after the Greek Civil War were uncovered in Thessaloniki, Greece, Friday, April 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

People walk outside Yedi Kule prison, which is now a museum, in the city of Thessaloniki, Greece, Saturday, April 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Simos Daniilidis, mayor of Neapoli-Sykies, poses in front of a monument in Thessaloniki, Greece, Friday, April 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Agapios Sachinis holds a portrait of his uncle, a prisoner executed in the Greek Civil War, in Thessaloniki, Greece, on Saturday, April 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Yedi Kule prison, which is now a museum, looms over the Greek city of Thessaloniki on Friday, April 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

A drone photo shows Yedi Kule prison, which is now a museum, in Thessaloniki, Greece, Friday, April 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

A drone photo shows a square where mass graves have been uncovered with remains believed to be dozens of prisoners slain during or after the Greek Civil War, in Thessaloniki, Greece, on Saturday, April 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Construction crews uncover a mass grave in the city of Thessaloniki, Greece, on Feb. 28, 2025, containing remains believed to belong to dozens of prisoners executed during or after the Greek civil war. (Municipality of Neapoli-Sykies via AP)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.

Iran had no immediate reaction to the news, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.

Meanwhile Monday, Iran called for pro-government demonstrators to head to the streets in support of the theocracy, a show of force after days of protests directly challenging the rule of 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian state television aired chants from the crowd, who shouted “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”

Trump and his national security team have been weighing a range of potential responses against Iran including cyberattacks and direct strikes by the U.S. or Israel, according to two people familiar with internal White House discussions who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The military is looking at it, and we’re looking at some very strong options,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday night. Asked about Iran’s threats of retaliation, he said: “If they do that, we will hit them at levels that they’ve never been hit before.”

Trump said that his administration was in talks to set up a meeting with Tehran, but cautioned that he may have to act first as reports of the death toll in Iran mount and the government continues to arrest protesters.

“I think they’re tired of being beat up by the United States,” Trump said. “Iran wants to negotiate.”

He added: “The meeting is being set up, but we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting. But a meeting is being set up. Iran called, they want to negotiate.”

Iran through country's parliamentary speaker warned Sunday that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America uses force to protect demonstrators.

More than 10,600 people also have been detained over the two weeks of protests, said the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous unrest in recent years and gave the death toll. It relies on supporters in Iran crosschecking information. It said 496 of the dead were protesters and 48 were with security forces.

With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the toll. Iran’s government has not offered overall casualty figures.

Those abroad fear the information blackout is emboldening hard-liners within Iran’s security services to launch a bloody crackdown. Protesters flooded the streets in the country’s capital and its second-largest city on Saturday night into Sunday morning. Online videos purported to show more demonstrations Sunday night into Monday, with a Tehran official acknowledging them in state media.

In Tehran, a witness told the AP that the streets of the capital empty at the sunset call to prayers each night. By the Isha, or nighttime prayer, the streets are deserted.

Part of that stems from the fear of getting caught in the crackdown. Police sent the public a text message that warned: “Given the presence of terrorist groups and armed individuals in some gatherings last night and their plans to cause death, and the firm decision to not tolerate any appeasement and to deal decisively with the rioters, families are strongly advised to take care of their youth and teenagers.”

Another text, which claimed to come from the intelligence arm of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, also directly warned people not to take part in demonstrations.

“Dear parents, in view of the enemy’s plan to increase the level of naked violence and the decision to kill people, ... refrain from being on the streets and gathering in places involved in violence, and inform your children about the consequences of cooperating with terrorist mercenaries, which is an example of treason against the country,” the text warned.

The witness spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing crackdown.

The demonstrations began Dec. 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at over 1.4 million to $1, as the country’s economy is squeezed by international sanctions in part levied over its nuclear program. The protests intensified and grew into calls directly challenging Iran’s theocracy.

Nikhinson reported from aboard Air Force One.

In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran's Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, January. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)

In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran shows protesters taking to the streets despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026.(UGC via AP)

In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran showed protesters once again taking to the streets of Tehran despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world in Tehran, Iran, Saturday Jan. 10, 2026. (UGC via AP)