It needs to be reminded that on Sunday afternoon, Vlastos attempted to escape from the Trikala penitentiary with a helicopter, but the craft was pinned to the ground following a shootout from prison wardens and guards.
According to police reports from Thessaly, the helicopter -with four people on board- approached the Trikala prison at 16:45 on Sunday afternoon, and the passengers opened fire on police and prison guards who returned the shots.
News reports said that the helicopter was rented a few days ago from a popular helicopter rental company in Aspropyrgos and according to the itinerary it was scheduled to take passengers from Pelion (in Volos) to Thessaloniki. The same reports added that while the pilot was flying over the Platamonas area he said that the helicopter had malfunctioned and that he would have to return, but of course this never happened.
Authorities do not exclude the possibility that the passengers threatened the pilot and the technician.
On Monday morning Justice Minister Antonis Roupakiotis, who was to visit the prison later on in the day, revealed that authorities had received inside information last summer that measures should be taken at several prisons around the country, including Trikala, since an escape was being planned. Given the information, the state took specific measures immediately. "We took specific measures, instructions were given, and with the self-sacrifice manifested by the guards, the escape was averted," Roupakiotis said on state NET television. He warmly congratulated the prison warden and guards for averting the attempted jailbreak.
The helicopter, according to the Justice Ministry, approached the prison yard and attempted to throw down a rope ladder to Vlastos who was in the yard at the time outside his wing while the passengers on board opened fire against the outside guards, who immediately returned the fire. Vlastos attempted to climb the rope ladder twice but on the second attempt he fell to the ground and suffered injuries to both his hands and legs.
An estimated 400-500 shots were fired during the exchange, and the helicopter pilot was slightly injured.
Vlastos had attempted once again to escape from Korydallos prison in December 2011, taking hostages at the time. He has been sentenced twice to life imprisonment and to 25 years in prison for his participation in the so-called "crime syndicate", and has also been accused masterminding the kidnapping for ransom of shipowner Pericles Panagopoulos in January 2009, giving orders from his prison cell at Trikala prison, where he was serving time for homicides, protection rackets and other offences.
This was the third attempted prison escape by helicopter. Greece's most wanted criminal Vassilis Paleokostas and Albanian convict Alket Rizaj escaped Korydallos high-security prison by helicopter in February 2009, in a repeat of their Hollywood-style escape from the same prison in June 2006. Vassilis Paleokostas was re-captured in August 2009 in Thessaloniki, northern Greece, and was named by police as the mastermind of the abduction two months earlier of Federation of Industries of Northern Greece (SBBE) president and Alumil aluminum industry CEO George Mylonas outside Thessaloniki, who was later released after his family paid a hefty ransom. Rizaj was captured three months after the escape in the coastal village of Prodromos in Viotia prefecture.
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