THIRTY-YEAR-old Eftychia Zari, who is accused of murdering her younger sister, hated the dead girl with an obsessive passion, the Nicosia Assize Court heard yesterday.
The statement was made by Zari’s half-sister Stella Iacovou during the former’s trial for premeditated murder and manslaughter.
“Did you believe Eftychia was capable of committing this crime?” asked Chris Christodoulides, Zari’s defence lawyer.
“Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Sometimes the way she spoke about Elli frightened me,” Iacovou said.
“I told this to her mother and her father and to Elli herself,” she added.
Zari, a private teacher, is accused of shooting her younger sister Eleni Zari in the head at close range on August 16, 2008. The 30-year-old has pleaded not guilty to all charges. It is thought she might today change her plea to guilty on the manslaughter charge.
During her testimony Iacovou, who shares the same mother with Zari, said she personally had had a good relationship with the accused and that her only concern had been for Zari’s “intense hatred for Elli, which was irrational”.
Through Christodoulides’ line of questioning an extremely negative picture emerged regarding the relationship between Zari and her murdered sister. On one occasion, Iacovou remembered walking in on the two girls physically fighting and their mother lying on the floor.
“There were tufts of the hair on the floor. I don’t know if it was Elli’s but there were tufts of hair,” she said.
Asked whether Zari had ever chased Elli with a knife and axe, Iacovou said she did not know and had never heard anything from anyone in the family because they didn’t talk a lot.
Iacovou said she had searched for reasons as to why Zari was “very intense” in her hatred towards her younger sibling but could find none.
“For some reason, she didn’t want her,” she said.
Iacovou said she believed some of the blame for Eftychia Zari’s problems could be put down to the woman’s parents.
“One would say one thing, and the other would say another,” she said.
On several occasions, police were called to the family home by either Eftychia Zari or her mother, asking them to help deal with problems, the court heard.
While Iacovou could not confirm if the family had been under the Social Welfare Services’ protection, she was rather evasive when asked if her sister had had a difficult childhood.
“Did Eftychia have a hard childhood?”
Following a long pause, Iacovou replied: “It depends how one interprets it… We all have difficult childhood years.”
Iacovou also confirmed that it had been Eftychia Zari who had found pornographic tapes made by her father when she was still a child – which had possibly led to her parents’ subsequent divorce.
Throughout the proceeding Zari, who was dressed from head to toe in black, kept her eyebrows furrowed in concentration as she stared ahead. Sometimes she looked down and other times she watched Christodoulides, but never once did she turn to look at her parents who were sitting at the back of the courtroom.
Zari is thought to want to call other witnesses to testify as part of the prosecution’s case following the conclusion of Iacovou’s testimony. Whether she will go ahead with this decision will be decided today.
