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A young man, aged 26, has been missing for more than two months now

23 October 2012 / 18:10:32  GRReporter
4292 reads

The thriller about the young man's whereabouts continues after the kidnappers who have recently been apprehended refuse to give any information.

The tracks of Marios Papageorgiou, aged 26, were lost on 9 August this year, when he left the house in the Diakofto village, Achaia region, in which he was together with his mother, to travel by car to the town of Egio in the southeastern Peloponnese. The car was found several days later in the Athens suburb of Paleo Faliro.

The facts disclosed so far have revealed that the young man was to meet Petros Mihaleakos, aged 71 – a family friend with whom the young man shared his problems. The next day, an unknown man called Marios’ mother on the phone and after telling her that her son had been kidnapped, demanded a ransom amounting to 620 thousand euro. He warned that the young man's life was in danger otherwise.

The telephone contacts of the mother with the kidnappers continued until 17 August when they suddenly stopped. She informed the unknown man that she had collected the amount of 300 thousand euro. On 16 October, the police seized seven men aged 71, 45, 35, 31, 57, 44 and 36 years accusing them of being members of a gang involved in the kidnapping of the young man. The data collected last month show that the arrested men had planned to kidnap the mother or rob her house in order to steal the 300 thousand euro, which she had collected for the ransom of her son.

Today, the online edition of To Vima newspaper published the last part of the conversation of the mother with the kidnappers, which took place on 17 August.

-Please, I want to talk to my son.

-If you give us the money, your child will be in your arms tomorrow. I'm honest. He will be home tomorrow morning; at 10 am at the latest...

-Listen, sir. I'm a mother, I am begging you. I think you have killed my son ...

No, no, I assure you that he was not killed ...

-I will burn the money, I do not want it. How can I know that you are not killers and that you have not killed my child?

-No, we have not. We swear.

An interesting fact is that the organizer of the kidnapping, aged 71, was a former employee – a chauffeur in the American military base in the coastal suburb of Hellinikon. He presented himself as a CIA team leader in Greece thus managing to escape from police inquiries. Furthermore, due to his experience as a bogus "CIA senior," he was "advising" the mother in her actions against the kidnappers.

During the investigation, the officers were impressed by the fact that over the course of time, he managed to convince his audience that he was "an important representative of American services in Athens and had the support of senior members of the government of George Bush and Barack Obama."

The man, aged 71, relied on the same "connections" to convince his friend Anastasios Basandis, aged 57, to call Marios’ mother and to ask a ransom from her by promising him that he would help him to obtain a licence to open a lottery station.

The negotiations, however, stalled due to the mother’s requirement to talk to her son. Then, the kidnappers stopped all contacts.

Mihaleakos himself helped in revealing their identity by making the mother doubt his proposal to mediate with the kidnappers for the gradual payment of the ransom. In his testimony, the man, aged 71, said that Marios faked his own kidnapping to extort his mother to give him large sums of money.

The victim's family, however, denies that possibility as Marios had access to all family assets and could take whatever he wanted without such an "operation".

The police action to find the young man, aged 26, continues. The attention of the authorities and the family is now focused on the phone calls in the "Crimes against life" department following the publication of the photographs of the victim and his kidnappers.

Tags: Crime newsKidnappingRansom
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