Daily Mail spotted a 26-year-old Alexis Tsipras way back in 2001 clad in a … Che Guevara T-shirt and Cuba baseball cap trying to exit a ferry boat in Italy. He was accompanied by a few hundred other Greek political activists, of the far left variety, that arrived in Ancona in a bid to disrupt a G8 Summit.

The iconic Genoa Summit was a milestone for the continent’s anti-capitalist, anti-globalization and radical leftist movements, something that was sure to pique the interest of many of Greece’s young radicals.

Amongst them was the current Greek prime minister, who began his political career as a smiling teenager in the youth wing of the “old guard” Communist Party of Greece (KKE) — a bastion of Marxist-Leninist “orthodoxy” in the post-Soviet Union world.

Italian police blocked some of the Greek activists, including Tsipras, from disembarking. In turn, the activists held a protest and tried to block the ferry boat from sailing way from Ancona. It was an interesting idea up until the time the Carabinieri intervened.

Daily Mail claims the images have never been published before, some showing Tsipras watching a comrade being roughed up by police.