Football player remanded

A SENEGALESE football player was remanded for seven days yesterday after he was arrested trying to leave the country using a fake French identity card.

The Larnaca district court heard that 25-year-old Abdel Ganer, who plays for fourth division side AEK Kythreas, tried to board a flight to Athens at 4.45am at Larnaca airport with the fake identity card.

The suspect confessed that an unidentified Cypriot had given him the identity card. Upon searching his luggage police found his real passport and the official Cyprus Football Association registry card of an unnamed English football player. Superintendant Vakis Konstantinides said: “Ganer applied for political asylum in Cyprus however the application was dismissed on April 30, 2006. Since then he has been residing illegally in Cyprus.” Ganer was not represented by a lawyer at the hearing and did not object to the courts decision.

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.