conscription. Seeing the omens several hundred Muslim Chams enlisted in its ranks. With the German withdrawal and the start of the Greek civil war, local ELAS forces with the participation of those Chams volunteers, aided with ELAS forces from the central Greece, attacked EDES in Epirus and succeeded to take the control in the Thesprotia region in late 1944 forcing EDES to leave in Corfu. As a result of the ELAS victory, in January – February 1945, about four to five thousand Albanians returned to their homes from Albania, mainly in the border areas of Filiates and Sagiada. But after the final defeat of ELAS during the battle of Athens and its capitulation (see Varkiza Agreement), EDES quickly regained control of the region, eager to take revenge for the Cham's participation in the attack against its forces. The expulsion of the rest of the community was completed by a massacre of Chams in Filliates in March 1945, carried out by EDES veterans under Zotos and groups of armed civilians. Thus, Col. Zotos, a loose paramilitary grouping of EDES veteran guerrillas and local men went on a rampage. In the worst massacre, at the town of Filiates, on 13 March, some sixty to seventy Chams were killed. Many of the Cham villages were burned and the remaining inhabitants fled across the border into Albania. However, there was no link between the perpetrators of the 1945 events and the EDES leadership, as well as the Greek administration of that time. The incident came under an investigation of the Greek army four years later during the second circle of the Greek civil war, in which time, the by-then communist Albania was actively helping the communist DSE army in its second armed confrontation to win the country's control, concluding that no crimes took place. At this time, Col. Zotos himself was part of the Epiros High Command of the Army, something that apparently played a role to the resulted decision. The active involvement of Albania in the internal affairs in Greece in that period (see Greek civil war) and the anomalous political situation also played a role in the disguise of the case. After the Albanian communist government gave compulsory Albanian citizenship to the Chams, the Greek government confiscated their properties (both of those who collaborated with the Nazis and those who did not) and permitted Greeks to settle in the area. After the