Sackings follow daring helicopter prison break

GREEK police scoured the country yesterday for two convicts who orchestrated a brazen helicopter prison break for the second time in three years, deeply embarrassing authorities who had vowed to improve security.

Police arrested four prison guards and the helicopter pilot yesterday. Three top Greek officials were fired for the security lapse and the justice minister called for an investigation into the bank accounts of all guards working in the wing where the two convicts were held.

Vassilis Paleokostas, a bank robber and one of Greece’s most notorious convicts, and Alket Rizaj, 34, an Albanian immigrant serving a life-term for murder, were picked up on Sunday afternoon by a helicopter that flew over the courtyard of Athens’ Korydallos prison.

The two had escaped the exact same way from the same prison in June 2006, and had been due to appear in court yesterday in connection with that escape.

Paleokostas, 42, had remained at large for more than two years until being recaptured last August.

While on the run, he is suspected of masterminding the June 2008 kidnapping of a prominent Greek industrialist Giorgos Mylonas, who was held for 13 days until his family paid a ransom.

A local resident captured part of the escape on amateur video. The grainy footage shows a helicopter rising from the prison and flying off across the city after shots are heard.

The pilot was found later bound, gagged and with a hood over his head. He reportedly told police the helicopter was chartered by a couple who said they wanted to go from Itea in central Greece to Athens. He said he had been threatened with an automatic AK-47 rifle and a grenade.

Paleokostas was serving prison sentences of more that 25 years. His previous escape operation had been masterminded by his elder brother Nikos, himself a convicted criminal who escaped from the same prison in 1990 during a mass breakout. Nikos Paleokostas was recaptured in 2006 and is still in jail.