‘Refugees from Varosha should apply en masse to the property commission’
TURKEY IS bluffing about giving compensation to Greek Cypriot property owners, said top human rights lawyer Achilleas Demetriades yesterday.
He argued that one way of calling their bluff was for Famagusta refugees to apply en masse to the property commission in the north.
With a quarter of the population still displaced after four decades, it is virtually impossible to say what is fair in Cyprus. But while some still long to return to their former, predominantly rural, homes, many Cypriots seem better prepared to continue life in their newer, frequently urban, locations.
Nevertheless, the property issue remains one of the most emotive and intractable parts of the Cyprus problem – and one which lays at the heart of the four-decade division of the island.
NOBODY could have guessed that Kyproulla’s best-known, murderous psycho would have masterminded the theft of the remains of the Ethnarch. I am jumping to conclusions here as nothing has been proved against the irrepressible Al Capone, who is just a suspect at present, but the risk of a libel suit is negligible.
The only danger would be for his lawyer to claim we were destroying his reputation as a notorious criminal by linking him with a relatively minor offence. Grave robbery would not look good on a CV that included convictions for murder and rape, even if it indicated that Capone was constantly diversifying and broadening his range of crimes.
GREECE again ground to a halt this week as unions called a nationwide general strike to protest a €4.8 billion austerity package of spending cuts and tax increases put in place to trim the country’s rampant budget deficit.
While the photos that went around the world were of anarchist youths running street battles with riot police, the mainstay of the protests are not the radicalised young, the unemployed and hopeless with nothing to lose; rather, they are those with plenty to lose and beginning to feel the pinch, in particular public employees.
DAYS after being drafted into the National Guard, Antonis Prokopiou Kitas, better known as ‘Al Capone’, went AWOL taking his army-issued rifle with him.
Kitas had joined the commandos – unit of the ‘hard cases’, especially back in the day.
But the devil-may-care attitude soon gave way revealing Kitas’ true nature. Tragically, that was not before he had murdered and raped two women, resulting in his conviction and sentencing to life imprisonment in 1994.
Psychiatrist Yiangos Mikellides, who was working for the state psychiatric services in the 1980s, recalls the army incident. He unequivocally calls Kitas a psychopath.
“He has no moral inhibitions, no remorse. It’s in his DNA,” he told the Sunday Mail.
PRESIDENT Demetris Christofias yesterday urged unity in fighting crime following the theft of the former president’s corpse, a plan allegedly hatched by a convicted murderer.
Christofias reiterated that people are living through a crisis of institutions and values, which is a global phenomenon, and not one only prevalent in Cyprus.
Christofias said the government cannot fight the battle on its own.
“We fight to restore values, customs … and ethos in our country,” Christofias said. “It is not an easy job; it is a battle that I would like the media as allies, and I am making this plea to everyone, to join forces because the whole of society needs to join.”
AS ROMAN Catholics from across the region prepare to descend on Cyprus en masse this June to greet His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, the pressure is on to ensure security measures and general sprucing up are completed on schedule.
Security is always the biggest headache for any high-profile visit, but in this case it’s even more of a challenge. The Pope will be staying at the friary of the Holy Cross Church, which lies partially in the buffer zone near Paphos Gate in Nicosia and partially in the Turkish occupied area of northern Nicosia. Surrounding the friary and church are empty, decaying buildings, piles of disintegrating sandbags, and narrow streets, not all of which are controlled either by the government or the UN Peacekeeping Forces.
OWNERS of hotels, tourist apartments and other businesses along the Tombs of the Kings road in Paphos, outraged that long-running roadworks will continue until the end of the year, have begged local authorities to stop work for the summer months.
“I’m just totally fed up,” said one local businessman, who runs a pub in the area.
“Enough is enough. I can’t see my business making it through the summer at this rate. This road situation will most probably finish us off,” added the man who didn’t wish to be identified.
But despite the pleas for work to stop for June, July and August, Eftychious Malakides, the district engineer of SABBA, the sewerage board said: “This is just not possible.”
“Did you hide my keys in your bag?”
Pause, breathe, “No.”
“Did you hide my keys in your pocket?”
Outside a bird tweets. Then all is silent again. “No.”
Then a pause that feels like an eternity. I know what’s coming, and draw breath.
“Did you hide my keys in my jacket pocket?”
I focus on steadying my breathing, and repeat. “No.”
The polygraph continues to track my vital statistics as the test continues…
I am in a quiet Nicosian suburb to meet Yiannis Saveriades. He is a US certified polygrapher, who’s currently trying to introduce lie detection technology to Cyprus. Intrigued by a flyer that arrived in the Cyprus Mail letterbox, I decided to visit his offices and find out more.
A STRING of burglaries in Nicosia on Friday have netted the perpetrators some €22,000, it was reported yesterday.
According to police, thieves broke into three homes, one of them between 8pm and 10 pm on Friday, stealing jewellery worth around €20,000.
At the same time an 83-year-old reported to police that burglars stole a 250-kilogram safe from his home, which contained only personal documents.
In the third incident a 32-year-old woman told police that jewellery and other objects worth €2,000 were stolen from her home.
Nicosia CID are examining forensic evidence collected from the scenes.
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.
