Hellenic Air Force

A Hellenic Air Force officer and a British national who were detained on Sunday after allegedly taking photographs of military installations in a restricted area near the Evros border with Turkey will remain in police custody in the town of Orestiada until they appear before an investigative magistrate Wednesday, according to reports Tuesday.

A Hellenic Air Force officer and a British national who were detained on Sunday after allegedly taking photographs of military installations in a restricted area near the Evros border with Turkey will remain in police custody in the town of Orestiada until they appear before an investigative magistrate Wednesday, according to reports Tuesday.

Police on Sunday detained a 29-year-old Greek soldier and a 25-year-old British employee for a non-government organization in Evros near the border with Turkey, it emerged on Sunday.

The two men were detained in a restricted area near the village of Nea Vyssa while allegedly taking photographs of military installations.

The government is scrambling to finalize a slew of contracts worth hundreds of millions of euros as the prospect of snap elections looms large amid the recent political upheaval, Kathimerini understands. 

A contentious amendment including offsets in a deal to upgrade the Hellenic Air Force fleet of F-16 fighter jets will be debated at the Parliament's Military Procurements Committee following strong reaction from the conservative opposition on Wednesday.

"Let's talk about this, so that all queries can be solved," Defense Minister Panos Kammenos told the House.

Greece's main New Democracy opposition on Wednesday attacked Defense Minister Panos Kammenos over an amendment that included offsets in a deal to upgrade the Hellenic Air Force fleet of F-16 fighter jets.

A lot has changed in Greek-German relations since the time when the greatest source of friction between the two countries was the matter of whether Greece would choose the Eurofighter as the fourth-generation jet for the Hellenic Air Force.

A parachute is seen on a wooded hillside near Sparta in the Peloponnese Tuesday, after a 39-year-old Hellenic Air Force pilot was killed when his plane crashed. The body of Squadron Leader Nikolaos Vassiliou, a father of two, was found shortly after the incident by rescuers.

With Greece reeling on Tuesday from the death of a Hellenic Air Force pilot during a training flight, six Turkish fighter jets violated Greek national air space a total of 47 times over the northeast, central and southeast parts of the Aegean Sea.

The captain of a Hellenic Air Force training aircraft who died in a plane crash during a training flight on Tuesday has been named.

The body of 39-year-old Squadron Leader Nikolaos Vasileiou was found shortly after the incident by rescuers in the crashed plane. He was the father of two children.