A 52-year-old man shot twice in his home earlier this month by two armed robbers that broke into his home has died from his injuries, according to press reports on Friday.

The shooting of businessman Alexandros Stamatiadis in the upscale northern Athens suburb of Kifissia shocked public opinion in the country, while generating sharp criticism by the political opposition, which pointed to what it claimed was a crime wave in Greece.

Stamatiadis had been hospitalized in critical condition at a central Athens hospital.

In commenting on the incident at the time, the relevant public order minister in the leftist-rightist coalition government, Nikos Toskas, merely noted that modern-day society is "no paradise". Days earlier Toskas, a retired army officer and former socialist PASOK party cadre, had also commented on the arrest of an elderly man, who shot at two burglars who entered his south coastal Athens apartment.

Toskas warned that Greek citizens cannot take the law into their own hands, otherwise "we'll become like the Far West".

Both of his statements were vilified in much of the press and on social media.