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Two robbers escaped convicts from a prison on Sunday Athenian up a rope ladder to a helicopter for the second time in three years, the authorities said. A woman who was the helicopter and exchanged fire with the guards of the prison.

Vassilis Paleokostas, 42, and Alket Rizaj, 34, were picked up by the helicopter that flew over the courtyard of the Athens Korydallos prison. The prisoners entered the aircraft after climbing the ladder of ropes thrown by a passenger, said the Ministry of Justice.


The guards shot the woman and returned fire with an automatic rifle. No one was injured.

Three years ago Paleokostas and Rizaj escaped the same prison with the same procedure.


An elderly couple found hours after the helicopter left near a road north of Athens, police said. The pilot was handcuffed, and gagged with a hood over his head.

Told the police that the helicopter was rented by a couple who said want to go to Athens from the village of Itea, in central Greece. The couple had rented a helicopter on several occasions in recent weeks.


There were contradictory reports from local residents about the number of vehicles from the place where the helicopter landed, the police said.

Authorities feared at first that four people could have escaped, but a second count of inmates at the prison confirmed that only two had disappeared.


Paleokostas and Rizaj should have appeared on Monday before a judge in connection with his escape by helicopter earlier, the June 4, 2006. That deal was engineered by the elder brother of Paleokostas, Nikos, a convicted criminal who escaped the same prison in 1990.