By Martin Hellicar
THE SURVIVOR of a murderous gun attack pointed out the man he said was one of his would-be killers before a Nicosia court yesterday.
On the morning of December 16, Charalambos Onisiforou escaped as hit-mens’ bullets ripped through a car that he and his cousin Hambis Aeroporos were driving from Ypsonas to Limassol. Hambis, 36, was killed.
Yesterday, Onisiforou, 29, was a witness for the prosecution in the ongoing trial of five persons — including two policemen — suspected of involvement in the murder.
The witness told the three-bench Assizes court how, as the hooded hit-men drove up behind Hambis’ car and the bullets began to fly, he jumped out and ran for the cover of a roadside garden centre. He then made for a nearby house, from the window of which he saw one of the hit-men, who had come after him, take off his hood, the court heard.
“He looked like accused number one,” Onisiforou told the Assizes court in Nicosia, gesturing towards policeman Christos Symeonides sitting in the dock. Symeonides, 35, only smiled.
“He was shouting to someone behind him. He shouted a name but I cannot be sure what it was as my hearing is not all that good, I think it was ‘Come over here Pavlos’,” Onisiforou told the court.
The other four suspects are: ex-special policeman Savvas Ioannou, 33, waiter Prokopis Prokopi, 35, cabaret owner Sotiris Athinis, 43, and his 51- year-old sister and hospital cleaner Zoe Alexandrou. All five suspects have pleaded not guilty to charges of involvement in the killing of Hambis and the attempted murder of Onisiforou.
Symeonides’ lawyer, Christos Pourgourides, argued that the description of the hit-man Onisiforou first gave to police did not match that of his client. The lawyer said the man Onisiforou described to police was well- built and balding, unlike Symeonides.
Onisiforou countered that when he said “well-built” he did not mean “muscle- bound” and when he said “balding” he only meant “thinning on top”.
Pourgourides said Onisiforou’s family considered Symeonides a “deadly enemy” and the witness was therefore changing his description of the hit- man to match his client’s.
Onisiforou denied altering his description but not that his family considered Symeonides an enemy.
Symeonides was a suspect for the murder of Onisiforou’s cousin, Onisiforos Charalambous Foris, in October 1995.
The Aeroporos clan’s enmity for Symeonides was confirmed by the next prosecution witness, Hambis’s younger brother Michalis. The witness said his family had “differences” with both Symeonides and fellow suspect Athinis.
Before the fatal December attack, Hambis survived another machine-gun attack in Limassol in June 1995.
His younger brother, Andros, 32, was gunned down outside Limassol’s Show Palace cabaret in July 1998.
Just eight weeks earlier, Aeroporos brothers Hambis, Andros and Panicos, 26, had been acquitted of the May 1997 attempted murder of Larnaca gambling club owner Antonis Fanieros.
The attacks are thought to be part of an ongoing turf war between rival underworld gangs vying for control of the cabaret circuit, a front for gambling, prostitution and drugs rackets.
Onisiforou and Michalis Aeroporos have both survived bomb attacks.
