There are many police cases that -according to the most common journalistic cliché- "shocked the whole of Greece". Some of them did not even deserve this description. Others deserved it but still did not have all the information that would allow - when someone was looking at them over time - to keep him.
There are of course those who justify it to an absolute degree and even though many years have passed they are still being discussed. If there was a top-5 of these cases, then surely one of these five positions would belong, without the slightest doubt, to abduction of businessman Alexandros Haitoglou.
A businessman with a large financial surface. The two most famous Greek criminals. A cinematic development. An end that opened bigger discussions than this abduction itself.
It was probably the first time that Greeks learned, listened, read and studied the "Stockholm Syndrome"! You see, the businessman's attitude towards his captors when he was now released was the one that sparked the biggest conversation.
The Stockholm Syndrome
In August 1973, two gunmen, Jan-Eric Olson and Clark Olofson, broke into a branch of Sveriges Kreditbanken in the Normalmorg district of Stockholm.
During the robbery, four employees are abducted. Elizabeth Oldgren, Christine Enmark, Birgita Lundbland and Sven Safstrom. They hold them for six whole days hostages, at the bank vault.
When the hostage-taking ended and the perpetrators were arrested, the unthinkable happened. The victims identified with the perpetrators to such an extent that they even raised money in order to raise money in order to financially support the legal fight of their abductors, while at the same time they refused to testify against them in court.
One of the Swedish police advisers during the hostage-taking, the psychiatrist and criminologist Niels Bayerott, was the one who, studying the whole case but mainly the behavior of the victims, coined the term "Stockholm Syndrome" to describe the psychological phenomenon during which hostages express sympathy and sympathy for and have positive feelings for their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with them.
The abduction of Haitoglou
Alexandros Haitoglou (who passed away in June 2016 at the age of 62) was one of the most famous businessmen in Northern Greece. Together with his brother Kostas, they had created the "group of companies Haitoglou", Whose flagship is Haitoglou SA that produces the well-known" Macedonian Halva ".
Although the financial surface of the family was extremely large, Alexander kept a very low profile and did nothing but challenge with the lifestyle he had chosen. For this reason, after all, he had chosen not to have bodyguards. Even in his movements, he constantly chose the same routes, which - as it turned out - turned him into an easy target.
One of the daily itineraries made by Alexandros Haitoglou, as the neighbors in Oreokastro, Thessaloniki, remember, was to and from the school his children went to. The route also included a secluded dirt road. There, on December 15, 1995, Vassilis and Nikos Paleokostas. They took him out of his car and put him in one of their own which they had stolen in order to use it in the abduction.
For 80 hours, perpetrators and victim lived in this car. The Paleokosta brothers, according to a police report published in the newspapers at the time, chose not to have a fixed point where they would hold their hostage but to move constantly with him. During the abduction, they came in contact with Alexander's brother, Costa (then president of the Hercules basketball team and LOTTO super lucky with profits of up to 160 million drachmas) with whom they negotiated the ransom.
The kidnappers' demand not to involve the Greek police was respected by the hostage brother who was the one who left the ransom in a secluded spot on the road to Amfissa. A few hours later, the Paleokostas brothers released Alexandros Haitoglou at the KTEL bus station in Karditsa.
"I can say that they treated me humanely above all and I had the opportunity to talk to them for endless hours and to understand that these are people aware of the whole situation that prevails here in Greece and in fact I would say that they had a level as people "του", Haitoglou had stated in the newspaper "Thessaloniki" after his release about his abductors and this very disgust of his speech, in combination with the attitude he held years later in court, which made many people talk about the "Stockholm Syndrome".
The truth of Vassilis Paleokostas
Last June it was released in bookstores by "Colleagues Publications" entitled "A normal life. Actions and escapes of an advertiser ", the book written by Vassilis Paleokostas.
In it, the "most wanted" criminal for the Greek Police tells his own truth about the years he was in illegality. He writes about many stories, including the abduction of businessman Haitoglou, where of course he does not fail to criticize those who spoke then about the "Stockholm Syndrome".
"We liked Aleko, he seemed like a good man. […] They insulted him while he was gone. Experts and non-experts have diagnosed him with Stockholm Syndrome and other such paralysis. They did not want anything to happen to the public that the kidnappers were human and they proved it. Their goal was and remains to frighten Kosmakis ", writes V. Paleokostas who dedicates several pages to the description of the abduction and mainly how the 80 hours passed between perpetrators and victim.
"It simply came to our notice then. The money is there. We will take them because his father would not risk his son, for the sake of the cops! He even advised us to be careful in the streets so that we do not have any control by the police! "Tied with the handcuffs here in the back (meaning the rear seats of the vehicle) I will accept all the bullets, I will not be able to react. If something happens, solve me and give me a Kalashnikov ”! We hoped he was joking. But you never know… »!
Finally, he describes the moment of the businessman's release: "I did a thorough check on all the bundles for any suspicious objects with simultaneous counting. It was 150 million drachmas in tens of thousands of new denominations and the marks a little less than a million. We entered the city of Karditsa and left Aleko on the KTEL of the city. He was obviously happy. He said goodbye to us with a kiss, throwing the inimitable: - Guys, if it didn't cost so much I would like another adventure!
- Do not worry. We are doing short!