Two youths, the one aged 17, have been arrested and another teenager is being sought in connection with the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Vassilis Mamopoulos in the Athenian suburb of Hellenikon on Monday, police said yesterday.

The unnamed teenager is alleged to have shot Mamopoulos in the head at point-blank range with a flare gun he converted himself into a firearm, after a long-running dispute over a 5,000-euro-loan that the victim had failed to pay back to the suspect. Officers said the 17-year-old admitted to masterminding the murder and throwing the homemade gun into the sea in nearby Varkiza.

The second man arrested is an unnamed 21-year-old Greek of Egyptian descent who allegedly drove the getaway car in which the three suspects sped off after the shooting. Police are still looking for a third suspect, a 17-year-old Albanian national.

Mamopoulos’s mother was shot dead during a raid on an Athens pharmacy in 2001 by Costas Passaris, Greece’s most-wanted criminal at the time. Passaris is now serving time in a Romanian prison.