Drugs suspect shot dead in car
A suspected drug dealer was shot dead and his companion injured in a shootout between police and heroin traffickers in northern Greece early yesterday. The gunfight broke out during a sting operation in which an undercover Thessaloniki drug squad officer had arranged to buy half a kilo of heroin from gangsters in the Vale of Tempe, where five drug dealers turned up in two cars. Police sprang the trap as the transaction was taking place, but the suspects managed to drive away. Some time later and several kilometers away, Larissa traffic police spotted a car that had gone off the road. The 27-year-old driver had died of gunshot wounds, while his 20-year-old female passenger was injured. Their names were not made public. Meanwhile, Athens businessmen Constantinos Sahas, 50 – who owns luxury restaurants in Myconos and in Athens’s upmarket Kolonaki area – Theodoros Kostiroglou, 60, Harilaos Harakas, 51, and Athanassios Koutoudis, 54, were charged on Saturday with trafficking in cocaine.
