WHEN IN the first week of November 2008 Attorney-General Petros Clerides called a news conference to announce that five people would face criminal charges for the Helios air disaster, we had written the following: “There is a sneaking suspicion that these five individuals will be charged so that authorities, under unrelenting criticism for not bringing those supposedly behind the Helios air tragedy to justice, are seen to be doing something.”
The suspicion was proved correct yesterday, when the Nicosia criminal court dismissed all charges against the five (four individuals and the company), having ruled there was no prima facie evidence to justify the charges. Two of the three-judge bench, ruled that the prosecution had not provided sufficient evidence for a case of manslaughter and reckless endangerment against the defendants, on the grounds they had employed ‘unsuitable and inadequate’ pilots. The captain and the co-pilot had all the necessary certificates and passed all the tests they were obliged to take.
Yesterday’s decision was inevitable, considering the charges were brought not for the sake of justice but because of public demand. The relatives of the 119 people killed in the crash in August 2005, had been applying intense pressure on the authorities to ‘bring those responsible to justice’. They were supported by the media which regularly called for the ‘punishment of those responsible’ and claimed that anything less would be a ‘cover up’. While the anger of the relatives was understandable, the media stance was indefensible, as it made matters worse.
Attorney-General Petros Clerides proved too weak to resist the public calls for a trial. He knew there was no case and said so a year before he finally decided to prosecute. Having read the report of the investigation by Captain Akrivos Tsolakis, who concluded that the crash was caused by human error, Clerides had said there were no grounds for criminal charges. But a year later, he foolishly gave in to the pressure and announced that four Helios executives and the company would be charged with manslaughter.
Did he not think at the time that embarking on this farcical trial and giving false hope to the relatives was the worst thing he could have done? Was he under the illusion that the relatives would thank him for doing his best, even if he lost the case? On the contrary, immediately after yesterday’s decision he was being accused of not doing his job properly, as if there were some way a conviction could have been secured. This is inevitable when the Attorney-General takes decisions that pander to public opinion instead of being based on the law.
After a trial that lasted more than two years, the Attorney-General’s folly and weakness were finally exposed. He has only himself to blame, as he did not have the courage to tell the truth to the relatives, offering them false hope instead.
