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Anastasia Balezdrova

The Athens Court of Appeal found guilty Alket Rizai and his girlfriend Aspasia Mitropia for his escape from prison by helicopter in February last year.

In the hall crowded with policemen the criminal listened to the decision calmly until the Judge began to read the verdict of his beloved. Then, apparently angry, he stood up, threw the handkerchief he was holding in the face of the prosecutor Yiannis Angelis and threatened him saying: “You will settle with the Sect of Revolutionaries. You'll see." Then he turned to one of the officers and said "Let's go."

The prosecutor requested the incident to be recorded in the minutes and Rizai’s defender Sakis Kehayoglou expressed his dismay at the behaviour of his client and demanded an apology on his behalf, giving his reaction to a momentary emotion.

Rizai was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for organizing a criminal group, possession of weapons and ammunition, illegal confiscation of a flying machine, breach of aviation security, escape and abetting the kidnapping of the helicopter pilot. Rizai’s associate and co-prisoner Vassilis Paleokostas was sentenced by default for the same crimes.

The criminal’s beloved was convicted of organizing a criminal group, possession of weapons and ammunition, kidnapping, illegal seizure of a flying machine, participation in the escape and illegal carrying of weapons.

The cousin of Rizai Ervis Stephanie was sentenced for criminal group, possession of weapons and ammunition and participating in escape, and his fiancee Blerina Lule – only for entering the country illegally. The businessman Hrisantos Anagnostopoulos was found guilty only of weapon possession.

At defence’s request the court recognized mitigating circumstances for all defendants for their clean criminal records except for Alket Rizai. Furthermore, the judicial council ruled the procedure on the allegations against Vassilis Paleokostas be terminated in order to avoid the risk of prescription, if he is caught.

After the hearing, the Rizai and Mitropia’s defender said he would appeal the verdict of the woman in the second instance. Sakis Kehayoglou stressed that none of the witnesses has recognized Sulla as the woman who abducted the helicopter and expressed the hope that the secondary court will perceive this.

The defender of the other couple that was caught in the house of Alket and Sulla Michalis Dimitrakopoulos said he was pleased with the decision which pleaded Blerina Lule innocent and also said he would appeal the verdict of her fiancé Ervis Stephanie. He stated in his pleading yesterday that if the two are sentenced as accomplices of Alket Rizai, the court will seriously hurt the image the criminal had created all these years.

Alket Rizai was sentenced twice to life in prison and has many more other convictions. He got involved with the police for the first time at the age of 20 when he was one of the first traffickers of heroin and cocaine from Albania to Greece. Soon after that he started car dealership for laundering the money from the drugs. He integrated relatively quickly into the nightlife and is considered an expert in contract killings both inside and outside the prison. Fair sex is his great weakness. All who know him consider him a woman chaser. They say his biggest flaw, however, is his boastfulness. Besides weapons and explosives, he loves reading a lot. He literally memorizes whole newspapers and magazines from different countries as because besides his native Albanian and Greek he knows other languages - Spanish, Italian, Russian and Serbian.

The dangerous Albanian became known in 2003 when it was found that he was the boss of the gang that killed a 30-year-old electrician, because Rizai thought he had intimate relations with his Russian girlfriend Oksana. Rizai and his accomplices kidnapped the man, drove him in the woods around Athens where they killed him and then hid his body. The tragedy in this story was not only the murder but also the subsequent finding that the young man actually had a relationship with another foreign girl named Roxana.

Police caught him a month after the murder in an incident act of exchanged shots. Two Kalashnikov rifles, a silencer, two grenades and a large amount of bullets were found in his lodgings. After spending three years in prison in the Athens suburb of Korydallos, Alket Rizai with Vassilis Paleokostas managed to escape by helicopter which landed on the roof of the jail. The Albanian managed to enjoy his only 3 months of freedom.

In August 2006 he was accused of the cold-blooded contract killings of three people. The special forces of the Greek police stunned and seized him a month later in the apartment that he had rented in the village of Prodromos in Viotia region. At the same time, there were legal proceedings against him for his escape and for assisting another prisoner to escape. After spending three years in Korydallos, Rizai again with Paleokostas, who was also arrested meanwhile, managed to escape for the second time by helicopter in February last year, almost like in a movie. He lived with his beloved Sulla from then until September this year, changing their lodgings until the police caught them.

His links with terrorist groups and particularly with the Sect of Revolutionaries are not proven. He personally made it clear for the first time in the court that he could have been associated with them.