This morning Nikos Palaiokostas passed away at Trikala hospital. Since 2021 Nikos had been released due to health grounds and was able to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest in his family home in Trikala, from where he was able to leave twice a week, for dialysis treatment at the hopsital’s Kidney Unit.
Nikos Palaiokostas born in Moschofyto, in the mountains above Trikala, to a large family with a background as shepherds. He was a bank robber, beloved of the anarchist/revolutionary movement, hero of the poor in Greece and the older brother of the still wanted Vassilis Palaiokostas . He operated for several years either with his brother or alone, mainly committing bank robberies and one kidnapping.
After a brief job as a sailor, he quickly began to engage in ‘petty theft’ and ‘burglary’ together with his younger brother, Vassilis Palaiokostas, who in the meantime had begun earlier. In 1988, Nikos Palaiokostas was imprisoned in the prison of Trikala but with the help of his brother Vassilis, he escaped on 18th December of that year. However, on 3rd February, 1990, Nikos was arrested again for theft, while in April of the same year, Vassilis was also arrested for car theft while preparing a plan to help his brother escape again.
Nikos Palaiokostas is ‘alleged’, according to the authorities, to be the organizer of the first helicopter escape from Korydallos prison of his brother, which took place in June 2006. The story goes, that two people hired a trip on a sight-seeing helicopter from Agios Kosmas, a coastal suburb of Athens. They hijacked the helicopter using a pistol and hand grenade, and forced the pilot to fly to the prison. When the helicopter arrived, guards believed the helicopter was a visit from prison inspectors. The helicopter flew the prisoners to a cemetery nearby, where they transferred to motorcycles and fled from there. Unfortunatly Vassilis was re-captured two years later on 2nd August 2008 in Thessaloniki.
Nikos is again ‘accused’ of the same action in 2009 this time liberating both Vassilis and his cellmate Alket Rizai. They climbed a rope ladder thrown to them by a female passenger in the helicopter as it flew over the prison courtyard. Guards on the ground opened fire and the woman fired back with an automatic rifle. One prison guard injured himself while trying to pull out his gun. Vassilis is still at large with a one-million euro bounty placed on him. His cellmate Alket Rizai was re-arrested in November 2009
Wanted for 16 years, Nikos was finally arrested in 2006, outside the village of Livadi on Mount Parnassos, after falling into a roadblock set up by the Livadia cops. He tried to avoid the roadblock by driving at high speed, but the car he was driving veered off course and went off the road. In recent years, Palaiokostas has been held in the Agios Stefanos prison in Patras. The state took its revenge by sentencing Nikos to 197 years and 376 months.
Nikos showed that we are not pawns of the capitalist system, that all laws of the state are to be broken, that there is no legal or illegal. The rich are only rich because they are left to be, Nikos and Vassilis understood that all that was needed was a trusted few to take it.
Nothing has changed since the Palaiokostas brothers humiliated the state & the rich of Greece. The rich are still rich and getting richer. There is need again and always of another cycle of expropriation, whether it is to fund revolution or to merely live against this existing rotting system of tyranny and inequality.
We will never forget or forgive, Nikos and Vassilis we are with you till the end.
“If you steal something small you are a petty thief, but if you steal millions you are a gentleman of society.”
Read the book ‘A Normal Life‘ for more on Vassilis and his brother Nikos.