The longest-serving convict in Cyprus, Panayiotis Kafkaris, 72, who killed a man and his two children, was released on Friday after the parole board approved his request following repeated appeals.
Kafkaris has served 31 years after he was given three life sentences for the premeditated murder of businessman Panicos Michael, 45, and his two children aged 11 and 13, in Limassol in 1987.
During his trial he said he had been paid CYP £10,000 (€17,000) to carry out the hit. Kafkaris had placed a bomb under Michael’s vehicle, which he detonated, killing all three.
Kafkaris had been fighting his imprisonment in a variety of legal means including recourse to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over the duration of his sentence. At the time of the murder, life imprisonment in Cyprus was 20 years.
However, in 1988, the Nicosia Criminal Court interpreted life imprisonment to mean until the end of a convict’s biological life.
Consequently, when passing sentence in 1989, the Limassol Criminal Court, relied on the 1988 findings of its counterpart in Nicosia.
He had requested to be released on parole for the first time in 2012 but his application was rejected. He appealed the decision and in February, 2015 the Supreme Court cancelled the parole board’s decision because it had not been examined properly and lacked justification. The parole board reviewed the request and rejected it anew.
Kafkaris turned to the Supreme Court again, which cancelled the parole board’s decision for the second time for the same reasons.
The convict sought another review on April 3, 2017, but received no reply.
Later in the same year, the Supreme Court rejected another request Kafkaris had filed asking for permission to apply for a preferential order after asking the parole board to review his case within a specific timeframe or reasonable time.
In July 2015, Kafkaris wrote a letter to the ombudsman and the ECHR asking to be put to death unless his request for parole is re-examined.
The lifer said he had no confidence in the current parole board and would like his request for release to be examined by a reconstituted board.
“If this is not possible, I request that I be euthanised,” he wrote.
In January 2004, he filed an application to the Supreme Court challenging the legitimacy of his detention but that was also dismissed.
He went on to appeal at the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in 2008 that Cyprus had violated Article 7 of the Convention on Human Rights with regard to the quality of the law applicable at the material time.
Article 7 states that no one shall be held guilty of any criminal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence under national or international law at the time when it was committed.
“Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the criminal offence was committed.”
In response, Cyprus pledged to set up a parole board but was censured by the ECHR in 2011 for failing to do so.
The board was eventually set up in 2013.
