MP refutes ‘you knew’ report

THE chairman of the House Defence Committee yesterday denied media reports suggesting a high-ranking army officer had accused former defence minister Costas Papacostas of knowing the danger concerning the munitions that eventually exploded on July 11, killing 13 people.

It was widely reported on Friday that Papacostas told the committee his ministry had agreed to receive the 98 containers, seized late in 2009 from a ship headed to Syria from Iran, after receiving assurances the material was inert from Colonel Giorgos Georgiades, deputy commander of the support brigade and former commander of the ordnance corps.

“It was you who misled me,” Papacostas reportedly said, with Georgiades telling the former minister to stop pleading ignorance. “You knew,” Georgiades reportedly said.

But yesterday, EDEK MP Giorgos Varnava said Georgiades never said such a thing and reports in the media got it wrong.

“This is not true. No such phrase was uttered by Mr. Georgiades and I think there needs to be a correction because this statement, which was the first item on the news yesterday, undermines and at the same tine offends people,” Varnava said.

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.