By Charlie Charalambous
THREE senior police officers sacked by the government last year following torture allegations had their dismissals overturned by the Supreme Court yesterday.
In a unanimous decision, the judges ruled that the sackings violated the human and constitutional rights of the three officers – Elias Kyriakides, Theodoros Stylianou and Charalambos Taliadoros.
“We have been inconvenienced, but in the end justice shone through,” said Stylianou, who was a Limassol CID officer at the time of the allegations.
He and Taliadoros, also a former Limassol CID officer, said they would return to the force, now that they had been vindicated by the Supreme Court.
Former Limassol police chief Kyriakides would not say whether he would return to work, but said he was glad his name had been cleared.
Stylianou, summing up the feelings of the three men, said:
“We’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. We tried to maintain order and apply the law.
“All the brutality allegations have been disproved.”
Taliadoros, however, said all three were victims of persecution and that it was not just a case of simple dismissal. “Our presumption of innocence until proven guilty was violated,” he said.
The Council of Ministers kicked the three out of the force in March last year after an independent inquiry found them guilty of torturing suspects to extract confessions while in detention.
At the time, the Cabinet was advised by Attorney-general Alecos Markides that, based on the inquiries’ findings, the policemen could be sacked in the “public interest”.
There were actually 12 policemen named in the inquiry’s report, which covered allegations of brutality between 1990 and 1993.
Markides ruled that eight should be punished, but the cabinet decided that only three should go because the rest were of lower rank and therefore bore a lesser burden of responsibility.
The inquiry, which completed its findings in November 1995, singled out Limassol police HQ as the place where the systematic use of violence and torture on detainees was carried out.
However, the Supreme Court judges yesterday agreed that the cabinet had overstepped its authority in sacking the senior officers, since a criminal court had cleared two of them and that no disciplinary procedure had taken place.
They argued that the policemen had been held accountable for a criminal act that no court of law had found them guilty of.
Furthermore, the judges said, the three policemen were not allowed to exercise their right to defend themselves.
Four years ago, Taliadoros and Stylianou were cleared on brutality charges by a criminal court after an unsuccessful prosecution by the Attorney- general’s office.
The court found the men innocent, even though it said there was evidence to suggest that a detainee had been tortured, but not enough to identify the culprits.
The three will now seek legal advice about filing for compensation.
In a reaction to yesterday’s ruling, Justice Minister Nicos Koshis said his ministry was reviewing the whole issue.
