Murderess with no regrets | Theodore Dalrymple | The Critic Magazine

The house in which Hoxha proposed to her in 1942 had been rented for Hoxha by Syrja Selfo, a man who supported him very generously. In 1946, Selfo was sentenced to death and executed after a show trial. The Hoxhas stayed for several months on and off in the house of Bahri Omari, Hoxha’s brother in law. He was executed by firing squad in 1945. Her friend, Drita Kosturi, was arrested in 1946, sentenced to death on a trumped-up charge of being a British agent, and spent three months handcuffed in the condemned cell, The sentence later commuted to imprisonment for 13 years in terrible conditions.

Murderess with no regrets | Theodore Dalrymple | The Critic Magazine

The Slap-tree

The mythical slap
In July 1963, Betty (under the name of Betty Bartlett-Ambatielos) produced the pamphlet “Give me back my husband: Release Tony Ambatielos and all the political prisoners of Greece. This prefaced a state visit of King Paul and Queen Frederika of Greece, against which demonstrators from a wide range of the left and peace movement booed Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth for associating with the Greek monarchy, which headed a semi-fascistic state. Seemingly, this stunned the British royals considerably. For they – and wider society – had assumed a notion that they were intensely popular. Queen Elizabeth’s coronation had only taken place ten years earlier. But it was as if the history and background of the Greek royals was designed to be a provocation.

On the surface, it appeared that there was no major problem. As the Princess of Hanover, Frederika was a great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. As a third cousin of Queen Elizabeth this made her technically a British princess of the British royal family. But she was also granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II. More decisively and embarrassingly, having lived in Nazi Austria as a girl, she had once belonged to the Hitler Youth. In school in Italy during her late teens, at a time when three of her brothers served in the German Wehrmacht, she known to have been a staunch defender of Nazi Germany.

Protests and the associated counter-action against demonstrators were intense. For three days the centre of London had been a battlefield, with 5,000 uniformed police, and many plain clothes police, watching for demonstrators and frog-marching them to vans; several hundred people were arrested. One of the protesters was Betty Ambatielos, who burst through the police cordon to rush towards Frederika’s carriage shouting, “Release my husband!”.

The furore over the visit forced the Labour Party’s leader, Harold Wilson, to agree to boycott a state banquet. Back in Greece, the protests had such a big effect that they caused a political crisis which brought down the Prime Minister, Karamanlis, who had in fact advised against the royals’ trip.

So that the royal party could see Shakespeare’s “A midsummer night’s dream” in security, the foreign office was driven to buy up all 1,100 tickets for one night’s performance at the Aldwych Theatre.

Remarkably, the next day, the new Greek premier, Panayotis Pipinelis, gave Betty Ambatielos a 45-minute hearing. Shortly after, 19 of the prisoners – but not Tony Ambatielos – were freed as a gesture. No doubt the deep impression of extreme hostility to Greece amongst the British public saw releases in an attempt to restore its image. A limited return to civilian rule was permitted and, in the thaw, Tony Ambatielos was able to return to Britain to be granted political asylum and be re-united with Betty for the first time for 18 years.

Betty Ambatielos — Wikipédia (FR)

En 1967, la dictature des colonels met Betty et Tony en état d’arrestation. Grâce aux pressions internationales, Betty est libérée en juin mais son mari reste encore en prison de longues années. De retour à Londres, Betty reprend son travail de lobbying contre la dictature hellène. Avec la restauration de la démocratie, Betty revient une nouvelle fois en Grèce. En 1981, elle est élue au bureau central du Parti communiste grec, désormais autorisé. Elle meurt en 2011.

Œuvres

(en) They shall not die : the trial of Greek Freedom : based on letters from Betty Bartlett (1949)

(en) Asimina Ambatielos: the story of a heroic Greek mother (1951)

(en) Give me back my husband: Release Tony Ambatielos and all the political prisoners of Greece (1963)

Betty Ambatielos — Wikipédia