Swiss tourists fined for smoking cannabis

TWO SWISS banking clerks were yesterday fined £500 each for the possession and use of five grams of cannabis.

Keller Paielire and Dieter Raffael Steiger, both 19 and from Zurich, pleaded guilty to the charges at Larnaca district court.

Paielire and Steiger were arrested earlier this week when police found the drugs in a ventilator in their Ayia Napa apartment. Two used marijuana cigarette stubs were also found in an ashtray and confiscated as evidence.

Paielire and Steiger arrived on the island on July 31 and return to Switzerland today. Police searched their apartment after a tip-off that the two used drugs.

Speaking in his clients’ defence, lawyer Michael Pelekanos yesterday told the court that the two’s holidays had been ruined and noted that they may also face consequences when they returned home once their parents and employers had been informed about the incident.

Pelekanos said even though drug use in Switzerland was not a criminal offence and did not have stigma attached to it, his clients understood they should not have used drugs in Cyprus.

He said that Paielire and Steiger were not addicts and had no involvement with drug dealing.

Passing sentence, Judge Tefkros Economou said he had taken into account the fact that the two were under 25 and that any sentence passed on younger people should motivate reform as opposed to punishment.

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.