The murder of a betting shop owner in southern Athens during an armed robbery has received widespread attention in Greece this week after police announced that the alleged perpetrator, a 39-year-old Turkish man, is a rejected asylum seeker who was previously served with an administrative deportation notice.
The body of the 61-year-old business owner was found on Sunday evening by a customer in the shop’s bathroom with multiple stab wounds in the coastal Paleo Faliro district.
Authorities tracked down the suspect using CCTV footage from the busy area – located very close to a tram stop – and from unspecified evidence found at the crime scene. Later media reports on Thursday said that the suspect stole a winning (5,000 euros) betting slip that he cashed at another location in central Athens. It was this flagged lottery slip that reportedly alerted police to his whereabouts.
Police maintain that the suspect has confessed to the homicide, although the latter asserted that a fatal altercation began after the business owner told him to the leave the shop because it was nearing closing time and also cursed at him. He was seen on video footage walking away from the shop.
He also claimed that the victim first attacked him with a knife and club, before he took the weapons away. A coroner identified no less than 30 stab wounds, many in the back, sustained by the victim, with the cause of death, however, being ruled as blunt force trauma – from the club – to the head.

The video below shown by Mega Channel, with Greek voiceover, shows what police say is the perpetrator of the heinous crime first staking out the betting shop and its surroundings.

According to reports in “Ta Nea” and “To Vima”, the arrested man clandestinely arrived on the eastern Aegean island of Kalymnos in late May 2022, where he promptly appeared before Greek authorities there to request political asylum.
He was provided temporary documents at the time, and was also granted the right to legally work in the country.
The entire case file of how he was granted temporary ID papers and allowed to remain outside a closed detention facility for third country nationals claiming asylum is now under investigation. His asylum request was later rejected. According to other media reports, he was subsequently served with a deportation notice ordering him to return to Turkey but banned from departing Greece for another third country.

Authorities have commenced an investigation to determine why he remained in the country and outside a detention facility.

Information released by authorities this week show he periodically worked as an unskilled laborer in the construction sector. At the same time, no criminal record was ascertained.
When arrested he was in possession of more than 7,000 euros.