WHAT everyone, apart from the Larnaca district judge, expected would happen, happened on Wednesday. The suspected spymaster, Robert Christopher Metsos, for whom the US government had filed an extradition request, did not report to a Larnaca police station between 6pm and 8pm on Wednesday. He left the hotel he was staying at and nobody knows his whereabouts, even though the justice minister believed he was still in the country. This, needless to say, was wishful thinking rather than informed opinion.
Someone had to put on a brave face after the catalogue of blunders committed by the authorities, particularly the judge whose decision was quite incredible, given the circumstances of the case. What made him think that a man wanted in the US, in connection with a case of spying for Russia and money laundering, would hang around for his extradition hearing in four weeks’ time? His decision, to set him free on bail, was taken even after the prosecution had argued that he was a flight risk and should have been detained until the extradition hearing.
This was an experienced judge, yet it did not cross his mind that a suspected spy could have more than one passport in his possession. But if he did not, the service he was working for could have provided him with new travel documents within a few hours let alone within the four weeks until the hearing. Even without a passport, he could have found a way to cross to the occupied north or taken a sailing boat out of Cyprus, which is an island, and gone to a neighbouring country.
But the police could have contained the flight risk by putting Metsos under 24-hour surveillance. Spokesman Michalis Katsounotos said yesterday the suspect had been put under ‘discreet surveillance’, because anything more drastic would have been a violation of his right to privacy. There was no arrest warrant against him, so the police could not tail him properly or send his photos to the checkpoints or the airports, because this would be unlawful – a violation of the suspect’s human rights.
These arguments are so ridiculous – allowing a suspect to get away because we respect his rights – that they would encourage the Americans to believe that we wanted Metsos to escape. Even the decision of the Attorney-general not to appeal against the judge’s ruling, because he felt he would lose the case, was an error of judgment, as it could have been interpreted wrongly.
Some British papers have already implied that the suspect was granted bail because of the close ties between Cyprus and Russia and the Christofias government’s anti-US ideology. There is probably no truth in any of this, but the US government is more likely to believe this than accept that our judges and police are capable of committing such colossal blunders.
