A 20-YEAR-OLD man was yesterday jailed for six years after he was found guilty of robbing over €200,000 from a Nicosia district Co-operative bank in January last year.
Nicosia Assize Court president judge Harris Solomonides said the case was one of the most serious of its kind and expressed concern at the defendant’s young age and the rising number of crimes of a similar nature in today’s society.
“The severity of the sentences is a way and a measure to act oppressively and catalytically, and to give society and every aspiring offender the appropriate messages,” Solomonides said.
The break-in at the Strovolos Co-op bank took place sometime between January 27 and 28, 2009. The 20-year-old, along with a suspected number of accomplices, who to this day he has never named, broke into the bank through a window after disarming the security system. Once in the bank, the assailants cut the smoke detector’s wires and moved the direction of the CCTV camera after removing part of it and placing it in the manager’s office. The assailants also removed a motion detector device before finally breaking into the bank’s vault and stealing €264,255.75 worth of cash in euros, dollars and sterling. To this day the money had never been recovered.
Solomonides said the fact that so much planning had gone into executing the crime went against the defendant, as did the fact that he had played a significant role in its execution.
“He was part of a criminal team that executed a well planned and studied crime which resulted in the loss of a rather large income which of course its lawful owners have been deprived of,” the judge said.
Solomonides expressed the court’s doubt that the young man had not received his share of the takings following the crime on the grounds that he had had sufficient time to do so.
The judge also said the 20-year-old’s claims that he had not named his accomplices for fear they would harm him or his family was implausible because such a claim had never been made to police and was only mentioned in court a year after the crime had been committed.
Throughout the reading of his sentencing the 20-year-old stood straight backed, his eyes fixed at the panel of three judges. His mother, grandmother and sister sat anxiously awaiting the judges’ verdict.
The picture that emerged regarding his life was a sad one. The child of a broken home since the age of two, the young man had become the major breadwinner of his family in his teens, sometimes working two jobs, because his mother and younger sister were unable to work due to serious health problems. Trained as a plumber, the court said the 20-year-old had superficial relations with his father and that at the time of the offence he had lived with his 18-year-old sister in Ayios Dhometios. The court also said the young man was engaged to a 19-year-old woman who still lived with her parents.
The defendant looked shocked at the verdict and kept muttering “six years” as he was led from the courtroom, his tearful family behind him.
