Kyprianou denies link to arms find

By Charlie Charalambous

HOUSE president Spyros Kyprianou yesterday dismissed any suggestion he was somehow linked to Wednesday’s huge arms find in Galata village.

He has issued legal proceedings against Alithianewspaper for implying that while he was president, he was somehow aware that 19,000 bullets — thought to have been found in the cache on Wednesday — had been taken from police storerooms in 1979 for illegal purposes.

Kyprianou also dispelled press rumours that the timing of the find was tinged with political motives and was somehow a move by the government to embarrass him.

“I don’t think the timing of the find was in any way deliberate,” Kyprianou told reporters yesterday.

Police uncovered a massive cache of arms and explosives at an abandoned house belonging to the father of a former intelligence commander, both of whom are dead.

Officers raided the abandoned house in the mountain village of Galata following a tip-off.

The house belonged to the late Ioannis Koukoularides, the father of Charalambos Koukoularides, a former commander at the police intelligence service KYP, and a former director of the Cyprus Sports Organisation (Koa).

Police discovered six heavy and six light machine guns along with six Kalashnikovs, 47 hand grenades, 25 flares, one pistol, heavy artillery gun, 52 automatics, 22 rifles, one revolver, 18 artillery shells, one flare gun, seven detonators and tens of thousands of bullets of different types.

The bullets were packed in dozens of boxes stamped: “Ministry of Interior” indicating they were originally the property of the police force, which has since fallen under the jurisdiction of the Justice Ministry.

The weapons find is believed to be one of the largest ever made in Cyprus.

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.