A GREEK Cypriot pensioner who strayed into the occupied areas on Sunday night was yesterday remanded in custody on charges of drink driving by a ‘court’ in occupied Nicosia.
Cyprus police raised the alarm yesterday evening after 74-year-old Costas Dalitis disappeared while driving his motorcycle along the old Nicosia to Larnaca road in the Dhali area.
The man had been missing from his Nicosia home since Sunday evening.
The incident has provoked further concerns about security near the buffer zone after last December’s abduction of Panicos Tsiakourmas, who was seized from SBA territory.
But the Turkish Cypriot authorities yesterday assured the UN that Dalitis had been arrested inside the occupied areas, after driving through the buffer zone at around 8.20pm on Sunday.
UNFICYP spokesman Major Dezsö Kiss said that if the man was drunk and driving in the dark, then there were stretches of the road where it was possible inadvertently to cross the Green Line.
The man is reported to be in good health and has been visited by a Turkish Cypriot doctor.
The UN has been in touch with Dalitis’ family. UN civilian police and an accompanying doctor will visit him today.
Dalitis was remanded in custody for three days and is set to appear before a Turkish ‘court’ in Nicosia on May 17 on charges of drink driving.
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.
