A prosecutor at the Thessaloniki Court of First Instance has charged the three people arrested over the arson attack that killed Vagia Nestora with homicide involving possible intent, both completed and attempted.

The charges also include membership of a terrorist organisation, causing an explosion, arson and violations of Greece’s weapons law, which covers the possession of explosives. All three face the same set of charges, which will be attributed to each suspect individually once the pre-trial questioning process gets under way.

The prosecution follows the arrest, nine days after the attack, of a 29-year-old man and a 26-year-old woman, whom investigators from Greece’s Counterterrorism Service believe carried out the bombing itself, and a 24-year-old man accused of letting the pair use his flat as a base both before and after the attack.

The attack took place in the early hours of 1 July, when improvised incendiary devices were planted outside three apartment buildings in different parts of Thessaloniki, each home to officials and politicians from New Democracy, Greece’s governing party. One of the buildings housed the family of New Democracy politician Aphrodite Nestora. Her mother, Vagia Nestora, died from the effects of the fire, while Aphrodite Nestora herself, her father and two other residents were injured.

Investigators pieced together fragments of the devices recovered at the scenes with footage from security cameras near each building, tracing the suspects’ movements before and after the attacks. According to police, the 24-year-old’s flat, a short distance from the Nestora family home, was used as a lookout point for 24 hours beforehand and as a place to change clothes immediately afterwards.

The 26-year-old woman, who is from Athens but lives in Thessaloniki, was remanded in custody in February 2022 over her alleged involvement in Anarchist Action, a group blamed for a series of firebomb attacks. After the 1 July strike she travelled to Chania, in Crete, where she was tracked down and arrested. Counterterrorism officials believe two separate groups were behind the three attacks, which were carried out within 20 minutes of one another.