After killing two people, a gunman who had hijacked a bus with 33 Japanese tourists aboard committed suicide by jumping out of a window at police headquarters while in custody yesterday, police said. He died instantly.
Christos Kendiras, 48, broke a window and jumped from the seventh floor of the building in downtown Athens just before he was to be taken to a prosecutor to be formally charged, authorities said. Police had just finished taking his fingerprints before he died.
On Saturday, Kendiras hijacked a bus with 35 people after killing his mother-in-law and a friend in southern Greece over a family dispute. The hostages, including a Japanese guide and a Greek guide, were freed unharmed after being taken by Kendiras for a 10-hour journey.
Two police officers had been escorting Kendiras yesterday morning until he broke free from them and ran at a window, authorities said. He landed on a second-floor balcony, they added.
``Unfortunately, we had this event, which is not the best thing that could have happened to us,'' said Dimitris Efstathiadis, general secretary of the Public Order Ministry. ``There is no justification after the drama we had yesterday for any relaxation of security measures and to have this happen.''
Public Order Minister Mihalis Chrisohoidis ordered ``an immediate investigation to determine how this occurred,'' Efstathiadis said. ``The minister wants to find out in zero time what happened, to find out what the conditions were that led to him jumping.''
Kendiras was to appear before a public prosecutor in the port of Piraeus where he worked, authorities said.
Distraught because he believed his wife was cheating on him, Kendiras on Saturday shot and killed 77-year-old Georgia Spyrou, his mother-in-law, and Stamatis Taktikos, 44, whom he suspected of being his wife's lover, in the village of Galata, about 200km southwest of Athens.
The car repairman then drove north to Epidauros, the site of a 4th century BC theater that is one of Greece's prime tourist attractions.
There, he set fire to his car and used the blazing wreck and a gun to pull over the bus, which was heading to the theater.
Threatening to kill his hostages, Kendiras took the bus on an all-day trip back and forth along the main highway connecting central and southern Greece. Dozens of police cars, helicopters and ambulances followed the bus.
Kendiras shot at some police vehicles, slightly wounding one officer.
Kendiras demanded he talk to popular television show host Makis Triantafilopoulos.
In a deal arranged with police, Kendiras agreed to surrender himself at Triantafilopoulos' office in Piraeus and free the hostages.
Authorities took the freed passengers to a hotel in Athens afterward.
North Korea tested nuclear-capable rocket launchers, state media reported yesterday, a day after Seoul detected the launch of about 10 ballistic missiles. The test comes after South Korean and US forces launched their springtime military drills, due to run until Thursday. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Saturday oversaw the testing of the multiple rocket launcher system (MRLS), the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. The test involved 12 600mm-caliber ultra-precision multiple rocket launchers and two artillery companies, it said. Kim said the drill gave Pyongyang’s enemies, within the 420km striking range, a sense of “uneasiness” and “a deep understanding
RECOGNITION: Former Fijian prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry said that Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy serves as a stabilizing force in the Indo-Pacific region Taiwan can lead the unification of the Chinese people, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Polish president Lech Walesa said in Taipei yesterday, adding that as the world order is changing, peaceful discussion would find good solutions, and that the use of force and coercion would always fail. Walesa made the remarks during his keynote address at a luncheon of the Yushan Forum in Taipei, titled “Indo-Pacific Partnership Prospects: Taiwan’s Values, Technology and Resilience,” organized by the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Walesa said that he had been at the forefront of a big peaceful revolution and “if
North Korea yesterday fired about 10 ballistic missiles to the sea toward Japan, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, days after Pyongyang warned of “terrible consequences” over ongoing South Korea-US military drills. Pyongyang recently dashed hopes of a diplomatic thaw with Seoul, Washington’s security ally, describing its latest peace efforts as a “clumsy, deceptive farce.” Seoul’s military detected “around 10 ballistic missiles launched from the Sunan area in North Korea toward the East Sea [Sea of Japan] at around 1:20pm,” JCS said in a statement, referring to South Korea’s name for the body of water. The missiles
‘UNWAVERING FRIENDSHIP’: A representative of a Japanese group that co-organized a memorial, said he hopes Japanese never forget Taiwan’s kindness President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday marked the 15th anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, urging continued cooperation between Taiwan and Japan on disaster prevention and humanitarian assistance. Lai wrote on social media that Taiwan and Japan have always helped each other in the aftermath of major disasters. The magnitude 9 earthquake struck northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, triggering a massive tsunami that claimed more than 19,000 lives, according to data from Japanese authorities. Following the disaster, Taiwan donated more than US$240 million in aid, making it one of the largest contributors of financial assistance to Japan. In addition to cash donations and
RSS