Christos Kendiras

Case details

Christos Kendiras was 48 when he hijacked a bus carrying 33 Japanese tourists. Police said he released all of the passengers unharmed during a 10-hour hostage ordeal and then surrendered.

Timeline

• 4 November 2000 — A gunman released 33 Japanese tourists after hijacking a bus earlier in the day and surrendered to a television talk show host in the Athens port of Piraeus; Kendiras was arrested by police.
• 6 November 2000 — Kendiras died after jumping out of a seventh-story window at police headquarters in Athens while in custody.

Background

Kendiras was an auto body shop worker originally from the port of Piraeus. Police said that before hijacking the bus, he had killed his mother-in-law and a friend in a village in southern Greece.

The offence

Kendiras was armed with a shotgun and also claimed to be carrying a 9mm pistol. He hijacked a bus carrying 33 Japanese tourists as well as a Greek tour guide and the driver. None of the passengers was injured.

Police said the 11-hour ordeal began early Saturday when Kendiras shot and killed his mother-in-law, 77-year-old Georgia Spyrou, just outside the port village of Galata. He then drove into Galata and shot and killed Stamatis Taktikos, a friend he believed was having an affair with his wife.

After the shootings, Kendiras drove about 20 miles north to Epidauros, a theater dating from the 4th century BC about 110 miles southwest of Athens. Police said he used a container of fuel to set fire to his car and then stopped the passing bus. It was not immediately clear how he stopped or boarded the bus. Police said Kendiras first ordered the bus to head north toward Athens, but then directed the driver to turn around and head to Galata, where the killings took place.

Kendiras threatened to kill his hostages one at a time if police did not stop following him. At one point, Kendiras apparently shot at a patrol motorcycle as it approached the bus; the policeman was slightly injured by broken glass from his bike’s shattered windshield.

Investigation and custody

Japan had contacted Greek authorities and urged them to safeguard the hostages' lives, foreign ministry spokesman Masaru Dekiba said. Police set up road blocks along the main north-south highway connecting the capital with southern Greece and initially said they would attempt to stop the bus in Corinth, 52 miles west of Athens. The hijacker ordered the bus to change routes several times.

Before the surrender, heavily armed members of the anti-terrorist squad, two police helicopters, more than 20 police cars, seven motorbikes and several ambulances and fire trucks shadowed and isolated the moving bus. No other vehicles were allowed within more than two kilometer (mile).

Kendiras used a cell phone to stay in contact with a local television station. Earlier speaking to Alpha by mobile phone, Kendiras appeared agitated and spoke disjointedly about family problems. Police Gen. Spyros Toundopoulos said Kendiras was armed with a shotgun and also claimed to be carrying a 9mm pistol. Reporters from the Antenna and Alpha television channels who spoke to the gunman said he did not threaten to kill any of the passengers.

Surrender and arrest

Kendiras turned himself over to TV talk show host Makis Triantafilopoulos outside his office in the Athens port of Piraeus. He was then arrested. After his surrender, he was seen bowing to the Japanese tourists in television footage supplied by Greece's Alpha Channel, where Triantafilopoulos was host of a late night talk show that often deals with social problems.

The bus passengers were being taken by police to an Athens hotel. Alpha showed the gunman giving his shotgun to bus driver Giorgos Tsakonas before leaving the bus. Kendiras then went into Triantafilopoulos' office with police officers, where he reportedly made a statement before a television camera. Police said Kendiras had reportedly been talking to Triantafilopoulos during the afternoon.

After surrender, Kendiras was taken into custody and was held at police headquarters.

Suicide in custody (outcome)

Kendiras committed suicide the same day by jumping out of a window at police headquarters while in custody. He died instantly after breaking a window and jumping from the seventh floor in downtown Athens just before he was to be taken to a prosecutor to be formally charged. Police had just finished taking his fingerprints before he died. Authorities said he broke free from a guard who was escorting him to a prosecutor's office after he was fingerprinted, photographed and interrogated.

Statements and quotations

Kendiras told reporters he would kill his hostages one at a time if police did not stop following him.

Kendiras said: “I wanted to kill my mother-in-law. In other words, if I didn't kill her she'd be going in for heart surgery anyway, the people were going to give money for nothing,” sad Kendiras, an auto body shop worker originally from the port of Piraeus.

Other details

This was the third time in the past 1-1/2 years that a hijacker had taken a busload of passengers hostage in Greece. In May 1999, an Albanian armed with a hand grenade forced a bus to drive to Albania with eight hostages; Albanian police stormed the bus, killing the hijacker and one captive. Two months later, another Albanian seized a bus and tried to take it to Albania; he was killed by a police sniper after a 24-hour standoff.

Dimitris Efstathiadis, general secretary of the Public Order Ministry, said: “ 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.''

Efstathiadis also said: “The minister wants to find out in zero time what happened, to find out what the conditions were that led to him jumping.”