IN A BID to hurt his credibility, the defence the trial for the murder of media owner Andis Hadjicostis yesterday accused a prosecution witness of agreeing to testify in exchange for a lighter sentence for offences he had admitted to committing.
Giorgos Zavrandonas was grilled by two defence attorneys, who accused him of lying and acting in return for a life abroad after the end of the trial.
Zavrandonas is currently serving a 12-year prison term at an unspecified location in connection with the attempt to kill Andreas Gregoriou, one of the defendants in the case, and conspiring to murder a group of people involved in online gambling in a case unrelated to Hadjicostis’ murder in January 2010.
The 33-year-old, who was placed in a witness protection programme, has previously implicated Gregoriou, and co-defendants television presenter Elena Skordelli, 42, and her brother Tasos Krasopoulis, 37, in Hadjicostis’ murder.
Skordelli’s defence attorney Michalakis Kyprianou put it to Zavrandonas that he has asked to leave Cyprus with his family as soon as possible as part of witness protection.
The witness admitted to wanting to go overseas but only after serving the sentence imposed by the court.
He added that he also wanted to go abroad so that he would never again get involved in crime.
Asked what would be the benefit of him entering witness protection, Zavrandonas said it would change his life.
“I decided I wanted to change and this was the only way,” Zavrandonas told the court.
He said he had decided on his own to testify in the case.
“The police did not say anything; I decided to change and if you cannot understand this there is nothing I can do,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Zavrandonas was quizzed by Krasopoulis’ lawyer Marios Georgiou, who suggested that the prosecution witness could himself be linked to Hadjicostis’ murder.
This suspicion, Georgiou said, is reinforced by the fact that a sawn-off shotgun had been found in Zavrandonas’ possession when he was arrested for the murder conspiracy in April last year.
It is alleged that the murder weapon in the Hadjicostis case was a sawn-off shotgun that has not been found.
“I have nothing to do with the Hadjicostis murder,” Zavrandonas said. “The sawn-off I had has nothing to do with the murder.”
Hadjicostis was gunned down in January 2010 outside his Nicosia home.
A fourth defendant, Gregoris Xenofontos, 29, is suspected of being the man who pulled the trigger.
