THE SAGA of the Petros Patsalides case wound down yesterday, when the former fugitive and shooting suspect was sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment for escaping police custody.
In January last year, Patsalides was arrested after a drive-by shooting outside Nicosia’s Dow Jones disco. It emerged that Patsalides’ had been in the club at the time, and witnesses said he had earlier tried to get her to leave the place with him, but she refused. Two Russian girls were injured from the stray bullets fired by a machinegun.
The ensuing storyline was full of twists and turns, as the suspect managed to escape police custody in old Nicosia, where he took police ostensibly to show them a weapons stash. The 34-year-old was at large for 18 days, in the end turning himself over to well-known Sigma TV reporter Demetris Mamas. The controversial Mamas’ involvement alone served to catapult the case to number one news item for some time.
In the initial hearing, Patsalides’ girlfriend, believed to have been the target of the angered attack at Dow Jones, had a change of heart and decided not to press charges.
Last July, the unlikely couple tied the knot in a civil ceremony held in an office behind the bars of the Nicosia central prisons.
With the charges of shooting with intent to kill and illegal arms possession having been dropped, the prosecution was pressing for a conviction for Patsalides’ escape from police custody.
An anticlimax to the affair unfolded yesterday, as a Nicosia criminal court perfunctorily sentenced Patsalides to seven months’ imprisonment, effective 24 February 2002; that means Patsalides will be out in three months’ time.
As the defence lawyer told the court, Patsalides and his beloved planned to have a religious marriage as soon as he got out of jail.
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.
