Greek Bus hijackers had croissants not dynamite

Greece's freed hijack hostages yesterday portrayed their Albanian captors as bungling criminals just after money who were easily manipulated and armed with croissants, not dynamite.

The bus hostage siege ended peacefully yesterday when all 23 passengers were freed and police revealed the two hijackers had been bluffing when they threatened to blow up the bus.

Greek officials said training that security forces received in protecting last August's Athens Olympic Games and phone calls to the gunmen from their relatives urging them to give themselves up played key roles in ending the drama.

The hostages said the gunmen who kept them captive for 18 hours were angry young men who seemed bewildered when the hijack went wrong from the first seconds when the driver escaped, activating a secret switch installed for the Olympics that immobilised the vehicle. The hostages said it became easier for them to convince the gunmen to free passengers in batches of two or three as the siege dragged on with no sign of authorities agreeing to a $1 million ransom demand.

"They were vulnerable. We could get around them," said Stella Matara who was among the last six hostages released.

Another hostage, George Vassilas, said even when the gunmen fired shots to keep surrounding police at bay the hijackers assured passengers their anger was not directed at them.

"The hijackers kept saying to us that they would not hurt us, they didn't want to harm us", he said.Speaking after the end of the siege, which had lasted from dawn on Wednesday until just after midnight on Thursday morning, Greek police chief George Angelakos said the gunmen did not have any explosives despite telling hostages they had dynamite.

Their only weapons were hunting rifles.

"There were no explosives. They just claimed they had explosives to emphasise the fact that they could do harm," Angelakos told reporters.

"Obviously it was money (the $1 million ransom) they were after. They wanted to go to Albania but they said they wanted to go to the airport to blow smoke in our faces."