Christos Kendiras, 48, surrendered
in the Athens port of Piraeus and was arrested by police. Before
hijacking the bus, he had killed his mother-in-law and a friend in a
village in southern Greece, police said. None of the passengers was
injured.
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, the gunman was
seen bowing to the Japanese tourists in television footage supplied by
Greece's Alpha Channel, where Triantafilopoulos is the 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. He then went into Triantafilopoulos' office with police
officers, where he reportedly made a statement before a television
camera.
Kendiras had
reportedly been talking to Triantafilopoulos during the afternoon.
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, police said.
He then drove
into Galata and shot and killed Stamatis Taktikos, a friend he believed
was having an affair with his wife, police said.
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.
In Epidauros,
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, which was carrying the 33 Japanese tourists
as well as a Greek tour guide and the driver.
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,
police said.
Kendiras was
armed with a shotgun and also claimed to be carrying a 9mm pistol, said
police Gen. Spyros Toundopoulos.
Reporters from
the Antenna and Alpha television channels who spoke to the gunman said
he didn't threatened to kill any of the passengers.
The tourists
arrived in Greece two days ago on a three-day trip to the Peloponnese,
he said.
At one point in
the hostage drama, Kendiras apparently shot at a patrol motorcycle as it
approached the bus, police said. The policeman was slightly
injured by broken glass from his bike's shattered windshield.
Earlier,
speaking to Alpha by mobile phone, Kendiras appeared agitated and spoke
disjointedly about family problems. He said his wife had been cheating
on him and he blamed her mother.
"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.
He demanded to
speak to his wife, and police attempted to arrange a meeting,
authorities said.
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.
But 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).
It was the third
time in the past 1-1/2 years that a hijacker has 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.
