IN HIS latest attempt to get out of jail Turkish Cypriot businessman and banker Salih Boyaci yesterday called for a general amnesty for all prisoners being held in north Nicosia’s ‘state’ prison – on the grounds that conditions at the prison were “intolerable” for both inmates and staff.
Boyaci is currently serving a six-year sentence after being found guilty in early 2004 of embezzling up to $80 million of investors’ money from his Cyprus Credit Bank into other businesses in his portfolio in the period 1991 to 1999. His Bank collapsed in 2001, along with handful of other Turkish Cypriot banks – an event widely believed to have sparked mass discontent with the Denktash regime.
“The prison is overcrowded by 70 per cent, and despite all efforts on health and humanitarian grounds, the authorities are seriously overstretched,” Boyaci, the father-in-law of Turkish Cypriot ‘foreign minister’ and deputy ‘prime minister’ Serdar Denktash, said in an announcement published yesterday after his return to prison on Sunday following six months of medical treatment in Istanbul for a heart condition.
Since his conviction in early 2004 Boyaci has spent almost nine months out of prison, apparently in order to receive urgent medical treatment for a heart condition. During his recent six-month break from prison, Boyaci’s heart is said to have been fitted with a pacemaker.
In his announcement, Boyaci called on the authorities in the north to exercise the same resolve in solving overcrowding in the prison as they had in reducing the number of unregistered foreign workers, and described the situation at the prison as “a matter of conscience”. He added that the 150 wardens at the prison were working under “intolerable conditions”, and that these conditions were having a negative effect on the wardens’ home lives.
Boyaci’s imprisonment has regularly caused controversy in the north. Many believe it is his connections to the Denktash family that enables him to access private medical treatment in Turkey while supposedly serving time.
Recently headlines broke claiming Boyaci’s medical suite at the prison had been fitted with air-conditioning, satellite TV and new furniture in preparation for his return from Istanbul.
But assistant prison director Arif Yirik yesterday denied such accusations telling the Cyprus Mail, “He is treated like any other prisoner”.
“Of course he is not being held in a 40-man dormitory because he is unwell. Instead he resides within the medical wing of the prison”.
Yirik added that all prisoners had access to satellite TV and the fact air conditioning had been fitted in the medical wing had nothing to do with Boyaci’s staying there.
Yesterday, Serdar Denktash refused to comment on Boyaci’s plea for a general amnesty. Earlier, however, Denktash said he believed Boyaci’s imprisonment had been motivated by Mehmet Ali Talat administration’s personal dislike of Boyaci and his political connections to ‘ex-prime minister’ Dervish Eroglu. Denktash also claimed Boyaci’s imprisonment was a way of cutting off the Denktash family’s financial pipeline. Bearing uncanny similarity to Boyaci’s announcement yesterday, Denktash’s comments were made a day after Boyaci returned to prison after undergoing three months of medical treatment in Istanbul in 2004.
The political dimensions of Boyaci’s imprisonment emerged again earlier this year when Denktash accused Eroglu of attempting to “bribe” him into forming a coalition with his National Unity Party (UBP) by offering to release Boyaci if Denktash accepted his offer of forming a coalition ‘government’.
Yesterday, Turkish Cypriot ‘Attorney-general’ Akin Said told the Cyprus Mail he had not received an application from Boyaci for a general amnesty and added that a decision on whether such an amnesty could be granted rested with ‘parliament’.
