JAILED member of Greece’s Revolutionary November 17 (N17) organisation Dimitris Koufodinas is said to be weakened by the effects of a hunger strike in protest at his transfer to a high-security prison.

According to supporters, he is struggling to stand up, suffering excess acid and dramatic weight loss, having stopped taking food on January 8.

In a statement on Saturday Mr Koufodinas said that he was moved in December as “an act of revenge” by the conservative New Democracy government, after Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis vowed to keep him behind bars.

Mr Koufodinas was transferred to the Domokos high-security prison, near Lamia in central Greece, following the tightening of laws regarding prison leave and the transfer system.

Supporters demanded his immediate return to Korydallos prison, where he had been held for 16 years “and that any institutional or de-facto degrading and discriminatory practices against him be terminated.”

“In Domokos prison, devoid of even a minute of calm, after 18 years of solitary confinement and at 63 years old, he lives in a crowded cell with other people in a stuffy cramped environment,” a statement said.

Mr Koufodinas was convicted of membership of N17, a banned terrorist organisation in Greece, Turkey, Britain and the US, in 2003 and handed 11 life sentences.

The group was named after the end date of the 1973 Athens Polytechnic uprising against the Greek military junta, which was brutally suppressed by the military.

It carried out a wave of attacks targeting banks, businesses and Turkish, US and British targets.

Some 23 people were killed in its 27-year campaign, including CIA Athens chief Richard Welch in 1975.

But its 1989 assassination of New Democracy MP Pavlos Bakoyannis was widely condemned across the political spectrum and N17 disbanded in 2002 after the arrest or surrender of most of its leading members.