By Anthony O. Miller
THE COUNCIL of Ministers has referred for disciplinary action by the Justice and Interior ministries an investigation report into the wrongful deportation of two Senegalese computer professionals, government officials confirmed yesterday.
The Cabinet had ordered the Interior Ministry to conduct the investigation, in co-operation with the Attorney-general, to determine whether the authorities broke any laws in their treatment of Agdou Khadre Diop, 25, and El Hadji Malick Sakho, 33 when they tried to visit Cyprus for a seminar on March 1.
The deportations, first reported by The Sunday Mail, spurred the Cabinet to apologise to the two black African men for being accused by Larnaca Airport Immigration Police of scheming to stay illegally in Cyprus, despite valid documentation, and being deported by Chief Migration Officer Christodoulos Nicolaides.
Cabinet Secretary Chrysostomos Sofianos and Interior Ministry Administrative Officer George Theodorou confirmed reports yesterday by Politisand Phileleftherosthat the Cabinet had referred Theodorou’s 20-page report to the Justice and Interior ministries for action.
Neither Sofianos nor Theodorou would reveal the report’s contents, insisting only the Interior Minister or his permanent secretary had the authority to release it.
Sofianos would only say the report was “brought before the Cabinet during the last session… (on Thursday, and) there was some responsibility attributed to some civil servants — I cannot specify — some people who dealt with this issue.”
The Cabinet referred the report “to the Ministry of Justice and Public Order for the (immigration) police officers (involved), and for the civilians, it’s the Ministry of the Interior,” Sofianos said.
“Whatever is the law providing about these irregularities, they are going to take action,” he said.
Michael Antoniou, acting Permanent Secretary in the absence of Andreas Panayiotou, insisted it was impossible to release the report, and that neither Politisnor Phileleftheroshad copies of it.
However, Phileleftherosquoted from what appeared to be the language of the report compiled by Theodorou, which reportedly blamed Nicolaides and the duty airport immigration officer in charge at the time of the incident.
“It seems from the available evidence that the on-duty officials at the control centre too their decision light-heartedly, taking short-cuts in the procedures and in a very short time, without giving the issue the necessary importance and attention,” Phileleftherosquoted.
Politis declared that perhaps the report’s “most important recommendation was that the powers given to the Chief Migration Officer be given to the Police Chief of the Immigration Service, and by extension to the policeman on duty at passport control, because he is there and can make an on-the-spot decision.”
The two Senegalese men said Cyprus Immigration officers at Larnaca Airport dismissed their claim to merely wanting to attend a computer conference to which they had been invited, and ignored their valid passports and visas, return airline tickets home, written invitation to the conference, confirmed reservations at the Hilton, travel orders from their Dakar employer and wallets full of cash.
Instead, they said, the Immigration officers laughed in their faces when they insisted they had Hilton reservations and were not merely scheming to illegally stay in Cyprus.
The officers then passed the matter to Nicolaides, who summarily ordered the pair deported back to London aboard the next Cyprus Airways plane out, despite protests by the airline that both men’s documents were in order and they should not be deported.
When Lenia Iacovides, sales manager of Gateway Partners SEMEA of Nicosia, who had invited the two to Cyprus, learned of their deportation, she pressed the Immigration Department to reverse them. It did, while their plane was still flying to London.
Iacovides heads sales in southern Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Gateway Computers, a US-based computer giant. Sakho and Diop are employees of System Plus, Iacovides’ Dakar distributor for Gateway Computers. It was her computer seminar.
