A man who forced his way into a German school in Greece with explosives and took three people hostage – three years after a similar attack on the same school – gave himself up, to police last week.

Costas Arabatzis, 55, entered the school in northern Thessaloniki at around noon on Wednesday carrying a suitcase stuffed full of explosives and grenades, police said.

He then kidnapped the school’s headmaster, bursar and a teacher and demanded to be paid a 10 million euro ransom or he would set the bombs off.

Arabatzis later released his hostages as officers surrounded the building, before giving himself up.

He carried out an almost identical hostage-taking at the same school three years ago while he was on leave from prison and kidnapped the headmaster and threatened to detonate explosives unless he was paid five million euros.

He sent his two children to the school at that time and was locked in a row over money with the principals.

Judges handed him an 11-year jail term for the 2006 hostage-taking but that sentence was reduced to three years for good behaviour.