If the saying that “the killer always returns to the scene of the crime” is even metaphorically true, John Kyriakou has done so more than five times in recent years.

The former CIA operational agent, who served at the service’s station at the U.S. Embassy in Athens, is coming back to Greece next Friday.

He will be the keynote speaker at the 1st Intelligence & Security Forum to be held on Sunday, May 11, at the Athens Avenue Hotel, and the topics he will touch on are many and interesting.

He will talk at length about the secret mission he had when he was transferred to Athens, which was focused on stopping the activities of 17N, which began in December 1974 with the assassination of the CIA station chief Richard Wells in Psychiko.

The frame of his speech will not miss the reference to the cooperation the Americans had with the Greek security services for the exploitation of critical information, as well as the assassination of British Brigadier General Steven Saunders.

The ex-agent will talk about his targeting by 17N that forced the agency to recall him to the U.S., his actions in the Middle East, the latest developments in Syria, Israel and Iran, and the impact the Israel-Hamas conflict has had on terrorism in the region.

Targeted by 17N

Kyriakou operated in Athens as a very good recruiter, choosing to reach out to officials from countries such as Iran and Iraq.

Besides this, he was intimately involved in the hunt for 17N, until June 2000, when the group assassinated British Brigadier-General Steven Saunders on Kifissia Avenue.

At the time, Kyriakou was a few dozen yards in front of the victim’s car and the shooters rode their motorbike past him.

A few days later, he was named anonymously as the CIA’s all-powerful agent who was carrying a gun in his armored car in the notice sent out by the organization.

It is speculated that they tracked him because his residence in Athens was very close to that of Sauders, who was followed long enough to know his schedule and routes.

Kyriakou was immediately removed from Athens for security reasons and continued as an operational staff agent in Pakistan, where he captured al Qaeda’s No. 2 Abu Zubaydah, in a daring operation that included a parallel raid on dozens of homes.

When he retired, his revelations about the CIA’s torture caused an uproar, and he was hunted down and eventually imprisoned by the U.S. government, but that didn’t break him.

He has since written five books and is a regular speaker at forums on the world of intelligence and intelligence gathering in the US and Europe.