THE BODY of 20-year-old Janka Kovacova, who was found buried in a shallow grave after she was abducted, raped and murdered last month, was yesterday released and sent home for burial.
At the same time, Paralimini’s district court was ruling that the man who confessed to the crime be committed to trial in Larnaca’s criminal court in October.
Famagusta district Criminal Investigation Department acting head George Economou, who headed the investigation, said the young Slovak’s body was formally identified on Wednesday following a DNA comparison with blood taken from Janka’s mother and sister.
Officers returned with the samples from Slovakia last Friday. A formal identification of the 20-year-old was necessary due to the advanced decomposed state of her body when she was found on September 5. She had been dead since August 17, when she was abducted during the early hours from outside the Grecian Bay hotel in Ayia Napa, where she had been employed for the summer.
Economou said the Embassy of the Slovak Republic had undertaken the cost to send Janka home.
She will be buried in her hometown of Krasno on Monday, her friend Petra told the Cyprus Mail.
“Everyone is going to be there. Her classmates, her friends, her neighbours, everybody,” she said.
Panayiotis Netzadi, 31, the man charged with the crimes, was yesterday in court for his committal hearing. The Turkish Cypriot’s pregnant girlfriend and his sister-in-law were there to support him.
“I don’t believe the charges. He’s definitely innocent,” his sister-in-law said.
The 25-year-old, who has known the suspect since was 13, said it was “unacceptable” how many police officers were surrounding him as he was not a danger to anybody, and was convinced his ethnicity was part of the problem.
“He’s been baptised and yet everyone is against him because of the fact he’s Turkish Cypriot. The police and everyone look at him with a lot of hate,” she said.
“Everyone in the village looks at him with love, but everyone else looks at him with prejudice.”
She said Netzadi and his girlfriend lived with his parents in their home in the Nicosia district village of Potamia. She also said the couple were “excited” because they were expecting twins.
“We’re all standing behind him and I’m putting my trust in his lawyer,” she added.
Netzadi’s defence lawyer Robertos Vrahimis was confident his client had a “good chance” of being acquitted, but said that no one could know for sure as a trial’s outcome was never guaranteed. If found guilty, the Turkish Cypriot faces a sentence of life imprisonment.
Netzadi appeared in court in a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt. His girlfriend lent forward to kiss him and gave him a supportive squeeze on his back before he was led into the dock.
When the judge asked him whether he had understood the charges of abduction, rape and premeditated murder against him, he replied that he had.
The prosecution asked that the suspect be kept in custody until October 26 – when he is due to appear at Larnaca criminal court – on the grounds that he had confessed to the crime, had been charged with the most serious of crimes under the penal code which carried a life sentence and therefore increased his flight risk, that he could influence and threaten witnesses and that if released, he could commit crimes of a similar nature.
The prosecution reminded the court that Netzadi had allegedly murder Janka while he was out on bail pending a separate rape trial in early October.
Although Vrahimis objected to the use of this piece of information on the grounds that his client was “innocent until proved guilty”, the judge allowed it.
The 31-year-old has been charged with breaking into a Russian woman’s home and raping her. A Nicosia judge released him on condition that he report to Pera Chorio Nisou police station three times a week.
During his address, Vrahimis made every effort to persuade the judge to release Netzadi until October, on the grounds that his client’s confession was suspect.
He said: “The police had no evidence against him except this statement. He was about to be released because they had nothing to hold him on and he ‘suddenly’ confessed to a crime that puts him away for life?”
Vrahimis also said his client posed no flight risk as he was wanted in the occupied areas for failing to do his military service and choosing to flee to the free areas with his family 14 years ago. He asked that the court release the 31-year-old, taking his ID card and passport, and putting him on the island’s stop list instead.
But, basing his decision on previous cases, judge Christos Philippou said he did not believe the suspect’s “constitutional rights” would be violated if he were held until his court hearing and, taking into account both lawyers’ arguments, ruled that Netzadi be held until his next court appearance
The Turkish Cypriot’s girlfriend broke down as she listened to the judge’s decision. Both women kissed him before he was escorted out by officers and driven to Nicosia’s central prison.
