Contract killing

A 39-year-old Turkish doctor performing research on the COVID-19 virus in the United States has been arrested for hiring hitmen to kill a U.S. citizen, with his Turkish employee.

If found guilty, Serhat Gümrükçü, the owner of a lab named "Enochian BioSciences" in Los Angeles, and his lab's information technology manager, Berk Eratay, 35, could face life sentences.

'Trial of the year'

After an investigation that opened a Pandora's Box of revelations about high-level corruption, the trial of four people accused of the brutal killing started this month.

In December, Zoltan Andrusko, a restaurant owner from the southern town of Komarno, was sentenced to 15 years for Kuciak's murder in a separate trial.

One of two inmates who escaped from a prison in Avlona, north of the Greek capital, on Monday night has been arrested in downtown Athens.

Police tracked the unnamed convict to Omonia Square and are still looking for the second.

A special plan that the Greek Police (ELAS) said it has for guarding the US Embassy and the adjacent residence of Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt did not stop members of the anarchist group Rouvikonas from vandalizing his home.
The attack, which occurred at around 4 a.m., involved 10 people wearing crash helmets, who lobbed bottles of paint at the walls of the ambassador's residence.

Dimitris Koufodinas, the convicted hitman of the leftist November 17 terrorist group, has been granted a new six-day furlough from the minimum security prison in Volos, where he has been held since August 2018.

He will be leaving the penitentiary on February 28, according to a decision by the prison council. He received his last sixth furlough in late December 2018.

Dimitris Koufodinas, the convicted hitman of the disbanded Greek terrorist organization November 17 was transferred on Friday morning from Attica's high-security Korydallos Prison to an "agricultural" prison in Volos, central Greece.

The move was carried out following a decision by a transfers committee overseen by the Justice Ministry.

As the murder trial of two former secret service officials continues in Germany, 2015 will see potentially explosive testimony from a former hitman for Yugoslav intelligence.

A hitman who opened fire on three people believed to be associated with a local gangster has been shot dead in Tirana.

Police said he was killed by a plainclothes officer, who was with the three targets of the attempted assassination at the time.

The officer was gravely injured in the shootout, while another member of the group targeted by the hitman was injured.

The drummer with legendary rock band AC/DC, Phil Rudd, was accused Nov. 6 of trying to hire a hitman to kill two men after police raided his luxury New Zealand home.

Police swooped on the veteran rocker's waterfront house at Tauranga in the North Island in the early hours and charged him with "attempting to procure murder" and threatening to kill.