Bus driver held after straying north from Pyla

By Martin Hellicar

A 34-YEAR-OLD Greek Cypriot bus driver was detained by the Turks yesterday after he apparently lost his way and strayed into the occupied areas.

“It appears to be one of these cases of someone going astray in the north,” Unficyp spokesman Charles Gaulkin told the Cyprus Mail yesterday, referring to previous cases of tourists and local residents being held in the north.

Gaulkin said bus driver Petros Vasili had been apprehended yesterday morning and would be visited by UN officers today.

According to police, Vasili was apprehended by Turkish soldiers after he went to the mixed buffer-zone village of Pyla, near Larnaca, to pick up Turkish Cypriot workers who work in the government-controlled areas.

Vasili’s business partner, Phanos Michail, alerted police after he lost telephone contact with his partner at about 9am yesterday. Vasili had earlier been seen in a Pyla coffee shop, police said.

Unconfirmed reports suggested Vasili had lost his way after he went to the Turkish held village of Pergamos, near Pyla, to pick up the Turkish Cypriot workers.

Gaulkin said Vasili was driving a pick-up at the time he was detained, but added that the UN knew no details about the circumstances of his apprehension.

Tourists and locals captured after straying into the north have always been returned, usually after being fined for “illegal entry” by occupation regime courts.

Vasili’s disappearance was yesterday being investigated by both Unficyp and Cyprus police.

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.