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The anti-terrorist force carried out a big sweep in Anchialo, near Volos. Its aim was to nab the wanted perpetrators of last year's Distomo robbery. According to early reports, Giorgos Petrakakos and Spiros Christodoulou were arrested while Spiros Dravilas committed suicide.

The threesome was wanted for last summer’s armed robbery in Distomo. The suspects are also believed to have been associates of captured terrorist Nikos Maziotis.

According to the same report, the alleged criminals were arrested in a two-storey house in Nea Anchialo.

According to a senior police representative, when the suspects were invited to give in, two shots were heard from inside the house. Two of the suspects – 36-year-old Giorgos Petrakakos and 44-year-old Spyros Christodoulou – walked out in surrender straight after the shots.

They told the police that the third man – 34-year-old Spyros Dravilas – killed himself inside the house, probably with a Kalashnikov, to avert falling into the hands of law enforcers. The suicide is under investigation.

Spiros Dravilas

The robbery at the National Bank in Distomo took place in August 2014. Hooded and armed with Kalashnikovs, the three perpetrators took hostage the bank’s cashier and managed to escape. The hostage was subsequently released.

The offenders stole €300,000 and fled in a Toyota Rav4. The car had been stolen in May 2012; it was found burned in Paralia Potamos, 4 km from the robbed bank.

Later on, the threesome escaped in an inflatable boat stolen in the Peloponnese region, and reached Loutro in Xilokastro.

While committing the robbery, the perpetrators told the bank employees not to be afraid, because they "are citizens, too" and that they would learn who the perpetrators were from the evening news.

Antiterrorists investigating the robbery found that it resembled two past ones, which bore the footprint of arrested terrorist Nikos Maziotis.

One was the June 5 robbery in Sikourio, in which Maziotis himself was involved, and the other was the 2012 heist on the island of Spetses committed by Petrakakos and Maziotis together. After the robbery, they fled by speedboat, which they burned later on near Salandi in Argolis. Bank employees were taken as hostages in both cases.