Beating victim identifies police officers on trial

THE trial of ten police officers accused of assaulting two students two years ago continued yesterday with the testimony of a key witness.

Yiannis Nicolaou told the Nicosia Criminal Court that he positively identified five of the suspects.

He claims that one officer broke his hand, another kicked him, a third, a woman, stood idly by, a fourth offered him a cigarette, while a fifth handcuffed him.
He added that he felt humiliated, depressed and desperate after watching video footage of the incident.

The footage shows the repeated battering of Marcos Papageorgiou and his friend Nicolaou by five plain-clothes officers, including four MMAD (Mobile Rapid Reaction Unit) officers and a female constable, after they were pulled over for a routine ID check on December 20, 2005 in Nicosia. The youths were 27 at the time of their assault.

Five other officers who arrived on the scene later were implicated in the incident.

They were assigned with the traffic police, the drug squad and police headquarters.

The officers face varying charges including torture, illegal handling of civilians, causing grievous bodily harm, attack that led to grievous bodily harm, neglecting to stop an offence from taking place, improper use of authority, and common assault.
All officers were identified by their superiors after the 43-minute video was leaked to Politis newspaper in March 2006.

Nicolaou will continue with his testimony today, with Papageorgiou also set to go under oath at a later date.

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