20 years jail for attempted murder of police officers (Updated)

By George Psyllides
A 64-YEAR-OLD man was jailed for 20 years in Limassol on Monday in connection with the attempted murder of four police officers and possession of firearms and explosives.
Andreas Onoufriou had been charged with attempted murder after he fired against a police officer with an army-issue G3 assault rifle on April 24, 2014 while trying to avoid capture following a search of his apartment over suspicions of possession of firearms.
Five days later he opened fire at police officers outside his hideaway in Layia village in rural Larnaca while holding his five-year-old son with one hand and the assault rifle in the other before he made a run for it, but was captured minutes later.
Following an eight-hour hearing, Onoufriou was found guilty of 15 charges he faced, after the court dismissed his claims of fabricated charges against him.
In his ruling, the judge said Onoufriou had “done battle” against the police while carrying his five-year-old boy, and that it was a fortunate coincidence that no one had been killed in the incident.
He added that the way and decisiveness with which the 64-year-old acted, holding the gun and threatening to kill everyone was “chilling”.
“Evidently, the defendant does not only have no respect for human life, but appears ready to remove it from anyone who gets in the way of his criminal schemes,” the judge said.
Onoufriou, who until then had chosen to defend himself in court, asked to be represented by a lawyer on Monday. His lawyer argued the fact that he is father to a minor, who has been abandoned by his Vietnamese mother and is living with Onoufriou’s mother.
Also, that since his release for an earlier crime in 2008, he had not concerned the authorities until re-offending in 2014.
Police had been initially seeking Onoufriou in connection with two armed robberies.
Authorities had linked Onoufriou to the robbery of a Limassol co-op branch on November 28, 2013 and the robbery of the Public Sector Employees co-op branch on January 27, 2014.
In 1996 Onoufriou was sentenced to 18 years in jail for the attempted murder of a judge in Limassol, Michalis Mavronikolas, and was released in 2008.
In 2012 he was named in a plot to murder then attorney-general Petros Clerides but the charges were later dropped.

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