‘More needs to be done to track fate of missing persons’

THE COMMITTEE for Missing Persons (CMP) is not doing the most important part of its job, the investigation into the fate of all those who went missing during 1974, a spokesman for relatives said yesterday.

The president of the Committee of Relatives of Missing Persons, Nicos Theodosiou said the CMP should not limit itself to an exhumation programme, but should move forward with a substantial investigation, as expected by the European Court of Human Rights in its decision of May 10, 2001.

Announcing this year’s ‘Love for the Missing Persons Marathon’, Theodosiou took the opportunity to stress the progress made by the CMP. “But we can’t be satisfied from the moment there are no results to speak of,” he added.

Since reforming in August 2004, the CMP has had a number of meetings and made a lot of progress, Theodosiou said. But although the Committee’s role is to “investigate”, he said, “you will see that in essence, the Committee is not carrying out the most substantial part of its duties, which is the investigation into what happened to the missing persons.”

He expressed his conviction that international organisations should be given access to Turkish prisons, so they could study their archives as well as the Turkish army’s archives. “I believe this may provide us with a lot of useful information about the fate of the missing persons.”

Theodosiou said bones collected during recent exhumations in the north were currently being kept in a specially built area, in the ‘foreign ministry’ in northern Nicosia. “The CMP has visited the area at which the bones are being kept,” he added.

He said the bones were expected to be transferred for analysis to the new forensic laboratory being constructed in the buffer zone near Nicosia airport.

“In terms of the building, the laboratory is complete. All that remains is for it to be equipped, which we hope will happen soon.”

The Love for the Missing Persons Marathon began yesterday and will end on April 16. A series of events will take place, which aim to inform the international community on the issue, as well as the youth of Cyprus.

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.