A 38-YEAR-old man wanted for his wife’s murder in the United States is being held in Nicosia’s Central Prisons while local authorities decide whether or not to extradite him, in a legal battle centred on whether or not he may face the death penalty.
Ohio doctor Yazeed Essa, who disappeared three weeks after Rosemarie Essa’s death in early 2005, was arrested at Larnaca airport in October last year as he attempted to clear customs after arriving from Lebanon.
Speaking to the Cyprus Mail yesterday, Central Prisons director Michael Hadjidemetriou said Essa was being held in the facility’s closed prison.
He said the 38-year-old was “quiet” and did not cause any problems.
The Accident and Emergency doctor is being held on the island as Cuyahoga County prosecutors pursue his extradition.
The father of two has been charged with his wife’s murder after investigators concluded he gave her cyanide in what she thought were calcium pills.
But Cyprus will not extradite anyone who faces a possible death sentence.
Although Ohio prosecutors have sent the Attorney-general’s office two sworn statements assuring that the death penalty will not be sought, Essa’s defence is arguing that prosecutors could amend the charge to one that carries the death penalty once Essa is returned to the US.
Larry Zukerman, Essa’s Cleveland-based attorney who testified as an expert witness at his client’s extradition hearing in Larnaca, said Cuyahoga County prosecutor Bill Mason’s statement that he did not intend to seek the death penalty was “entirely meaningless as an assurance”.
But in the second affidavit Mason said he would not seek the death penalty “under any circumstances”.
Speaking to the Associated Press (AP), he added: “This supplemental affidavit reaffirms in ironclad language what I have said from the beginning: I will not seek the death penalty.”
The extradition hearing resumes in Larnaca today.
Reports claim that although the couple seemed to have had a happy marriage, the doctor’s “love for partying and living the high life put stress” on the relationship.
In fact, authorities believe Essa had been having an affair and had wanted to get rid of his wife rather than going through an expensive divorce.
When he went on the run, he left behind their children, aged four and two, who are being cared for by his wife’ brother, AP said.
According to the website ‘America’s Most Wanted’, Rosemarie Essa died on February 24, 2005 after losing control of her vehicle and colliding into an oncoming car just several kilometres from her home.
During their investigation, authorities learned that the former nurse, who had been married to Essa for five years, telephoned a friend claiming to feel unwell after her husband made her take some pills.
A forensic analysis of what Essa later claimed were calcium tablets determined they had been laced with cyanide, and the country coroner’s office ruled her death was due to murder by poison.
Essa subsequently disappeared in March 2005. Until he was picked up at Larnaca airport he had been sighted in Toronto, London, Greece, Syria and Lebanon.
No one was yesterday available for comment from the Attorney-general’s office.
Ohio has almost 200 inmates on death row. It has executed 24 prisoners by lethal injection since 1999, five of them last year.
