ATHENS -– A Greek accused of being the founder of Greece's November 17 Guerrilla Group said on Thursday he had been framed and denied all charges he led a band blamed for killing U.S., British and Turkish diplomats.

Alexandros Giotopoulos, the son of a prominent Greek Trotskyite, said police had linked him to the group's 27-year reign of terror simply because of his anti-capitalist views, Reuters reported. "I have denied these charges from the very start and I remain true to that," he told the three-judge panel trying the case. "They are based on pseudo-evidence that is crumbling, with authorities trying to fit me into their profile of leader."

He asked why there was no DNA or other direct evidence in the 1,000 charges he faces for assassinations and dozens of bombings that once made November 17 the biggest threat to next year's Olympic Games in Athens.

The band was named after the date in 1973 on which a student uprising in Athens against the military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974 was crushed. It also killed prominent Greek businessmen and politicians.

Giotopoulos and 18 other suspects were captured last year after a failed bomb attack led authorities to their first ever suspect. Their trial is in its seventh month at Athens' maximum security Korydallos Prison.

Giotopoulos, a tall, silver-haired mathematician who was a student radical in Paris in the 1960s, is charged with planning and taking part in all of the group's 23 murders.

He admitted to knowing how to build bombs but said that knowledge stemmed from 15 bombing attacks he carried out during the dictatorship. In one attack, he planted a 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) explosive device at the U.S. Embassy in 1972.

"Yes, I do have that knowledge (bomb making) and even the judge can do that, that's how easy it is," he quipped.

Dressed in a yellow shirt with his sleeves rolled up and wearing casual trousers, Giotopoulos, who said he worked as a translator from French to Greek, used quotes from Balzac, Aristotle and Kant in defending himself.

"The evidence shows that there is no Giotopoulos who's the leader of the group," he told the packed courtroom.

"I don't agree with the November 17 armed actions, but I do not condemn them," he said as the other suspects quietly looked on.

The group's first victim was the CIA station chief in Athens, Richard Welch, who was assassinated in 1975.

November 17's last victim was British defense attache Stephen Saunders, who was shot on an Athens road in June 2000.

Giotopoulos denied involvement in Saunders' assassination.

"On that day I was helping my partner undergo chemotherapy," he said in three hours of testimony.

In evidence so far, Giotopoulos, a self-proclaimed Marxist, has not been linked directly to any crime but police have said his fingerprints were on statements by November 17. He said Greek, American and British secret services had questioned friends since 2000 and tried to gather information that would make him fit the profile of the group leader.

"According to the charges I have spent many hours in the group's hideouts. So why didn't they find any DNA material and only fingerprints on papers and books," he asked.

Giotopoulos faces life in prison if convicted as Greece does not have the death penalty.