‘Army volunteer was spying for the Turks from jail’

THE INTELLIGENCE Service (KYP) believes an imprisoned army volunteer has been involved in efforts to spy against the National Guard, the Defence Ministry stated yesterday.

The Ministry issued a statement confirming television reports of an “EPY” – the acronym for a five-year service volunteer with the National Guard – caught spying for the Turks.

The announcement stated that the soldier in question had been incarcerated in Nicosia Central Prison between July 12 and August 31 this year “for a series of misdemeanours.”

“The Intelligence Service, in a letter sent to the National Guard, said the aforementioned EPY was trying, during his incarceration, to get involved in spying against the National Guard,” the Ministry stated.

The Ministry said it was investigating the matter and promised that “all necessary measures” were being taken to protect the army from espionage activities.

The volunteer National Guardsman was being discharged from the army because of his “series of misdemeanours,” the Ministry stated.

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.