Death penalty references to be removed

AKEL Limassol Deputy Yiannakis Agapiou yesterday accused the European Parliament of constantly finding issues to hinder Cyprus membership of the European Union.

“I am disturbed,” said Agapiou, president of the House Human Rights Committee. “First it was homosexuality, now it’s the death penalty.”

He was speaking during a Committee discussion of a European Parliament resolution on the abolition of the death penalty.

But he was reassured by spokesmen for the Justice Ministry that the European Parliament is merely a consultative body, and that its resolutions are only meant as advisory.

In Cyprus the death penalty for murder, treason against the Crown and piracy existed on the statute books until 1983, when it was replaced with imprisonment for life.

References to the death penalty continued to exist on paper in some areas of the penal code, however, even though they were not enforced in practice. The committee heard that these were remnants of British colonial rule and remained due to a bureaucratic oversight.

Justice Ministry representatives told the committee yesterday that a bill to eradicate such references was being drafted and would be brought before the House of Representatives soon.

The death penalty for serious offences during wartime also exists in the Cypriot military penal code. There is no requirement for its abolition, however, since there is a similar provision in EU law.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.