Turks fine and release bus driver

By Martin Hellicar

A GREEK Cypriot bus driver detained by the Turks on Wednesday was yesterday fined £77 by a ‘court’ in the north and released to return to the government-controlled areas.

Unficyp spokesman Charles Gaulkin said 34-year-old Petros Vasili had been fined for “traffic offences” – driving in the north without occupation regime registration plates.

He returned via the Ledra palace checkpoint in Nicosia at about 3.30 pm yesterday, Gaulkin said.

Vasili had been detained by Turkish soldiers near the mixed buffer-zone village of Pyla, east of Larnaca, on Wednesday morning.

Cyprus police said he had been apprehended after going to the Pyla-Pergamos area to pick up Turkish Cypriot workers and bring them south for work. The UN suggested Vasili had been detained after losing his way in the occupied areas.

Speaking before Vasili’s release yesterday, Government spokesman Michalis Papapetrou described the detention as “illegal and unacceptable.”

Sources suggested yesterday that Vasili had been detained after driving around near occupied Pergamos in search of men to work on a construction site in the government-controlled areas.

Gaulkin said Vasili, from Liopetri in the Famagusta area, had been examined by UN doctors and was fine. “He had no complaints,” Gaulkin said.

The pick-up Vasili drove to the north in was still being held by the Turks yesterday. Gaulkin said efforts were being made to have it returned.

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

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