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Criminals and senior police officers behind the nightclub shootout

28 November 2014 / 15:11:20  GRReporter
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The Albanian who fired his Kalashnikov in a night club and wounded 15 people made confessions after his capture in the apartment of his accomplice in the Athens Goudi neighborhood. Arber Bako maintained he had been drunk when he committed the shooting. However, this is not corroborated by the evidence the police have.

During questioning he provided investigators with crucial information about members of the criminal group that carried out a number of armed attacks in the Athens area.

It has transpired that Bako belonged to a wetwork gang running errands for jail lags. Among the names he disclosed is that of a senior police officer, says a report of the Greek news agency AMNA, based on police sources.

On Thursday, one of Bako’s accomplices named Claudian was captured in the Athens neighborhood of Sepolia. It is believed that he was the leader of the assassin gang. The man, in whose lodgings Bako was hiding until his arrest on Wednesday, was also detained.

The police are after five others: an Albanian named Oldi, a Polish citizen, and three other people, one of whom had helped Bako flee in a car from the bar in Mikrolimano.

The police investigation revealed that the day before the shooting Bako had rented a hotel room in the coastal area of Piraeus. This is where he kept the automatic rifle, with which he subsequently wounded the 15 customers at the bar. Then he hid in the lodgings of a 23-year-old fellow Albanian – the brother of a criminal serving his sentence in a Patras prison – intending to organize his escape abroad.

So far the motive behind the bar shooting is not clear. Meanwhile, Bako told police about previous attacks committed by the criminal group. For example, the attack at the Metaxourgeio bar was carried out as his accomplice had tried to steal the motorbike of a foreign citizen who worked there. The bar owner saw him and hit him. So the shooting and the killing of the 44-year-old man was an act of revenge.

The shooting at the restaurant on Michalakopoulou street was also done for paltry reasons. The men started firing their automatic rifles simply because the head waiter ignored them. The cafe shooting in Agios Panteleimonas was another act of revenge. As for the attack on the bureau de change, the perpetrators fired at the 44-year-old owner to rob his safe.

According to police sources, the detained Albanians were involved in a string of criminal attacks. During Claudian’s arrest in Sepolia, a man known by the name Metsi was captured as well. He is suspected to be a wet work executor, and one of his jobs was to murder a police officer. He was promised € 200,000 for it. At the time of making the contract, the officer was working for the life and property crime office, but today he works for the Internal Affairs Department of the Greek police.

Metsi and his collaborators have reportedly been contracted for at least five wet jobs. The orders came from criminals who are currently in prison, yet nonetheless are believed to reign over organised crime in Greece.

Moreover, Metsi is the main suspect in the murder of a man nicknamed ‘Pitsilas’ in May this year. In turn, Pitsilas had been indicted for several extortion crimes and bombings; he was reportedly the right-hand man of a well-known criminal, and also liaised between felons and terrorists.

It is worth pointing out that Pitsilas was among the key suspects for the dual murder of Golden Dawn members in front of the party's office in the Neo Iraklio district, on 1 November 2013.

Tags: Crime news Albanian arrest criminal group wetwork criminals a senior police officer
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