Greek jail hostage crisis ends peacefully

KORYDALLOS, Greece — The Ministry of Justice says four inmates who had tried to escape from a Greek prison have surrendered, releasing a total of 28 hostages and handing over a gun and three kitchen knives.

The four include a convicted racketeer and murderer, Panagiotis Vlastos, as well as three members of the armed anarchist group Conspiracy Nuclei of Fire. Authorities would not release the names of the three, although one of them, Michalis Nikolopoulos, gave an interview to a private TV channel.

The ministry says the inmates held a total of 25 relatives of other inmates who were visiting at the time, though they released four women before they surrendered, plus three prison guards.

Having staged two previous escapes from Greek prisons, Vlastos, 41, is currently on trial at a special courtroom set up inside the prison accused of ordering the kidnapping of shipping tycoon Pericles Panagopoulos. The trial is the reason Vlastos was transferred to Korydallos prison from another jail in central Greece.

Panagopoulos, who made his fortune in the cruise and passenger shipping business, was kidnapped in January 2009, allegedly on the orders of Vlastos. Panagopoulos was released eight days later after his family paid a euro30 million ransom to the kidnappers, most of whom were arrested later.

Vlastos has been involved in racketeering and other criminal activities from a young age and he first caught the public's attention in the 1990s as a result of a turf war with other crime families, during which he lost one of his two brothers. His other brother was killed in a shootout with police in 1998, during Vlastos' capture from his first escape from prison.

Korydallos, a maximum security prison located in a suburb west of Athens, has seen several escapes, the most spectacular of which were the two escapes by helicopter staged by convicted criminals Vassilis Paleokostas and Alket Rizaj in June 2006 and February 2009.