TWO men on trial for murder drove to a Nicosia park where they gagged the victim who was still alive after the beating he suffered on the head, the Nicosia Assizes Court heard yesterday.
The two, 22-year-old Pakistani Zeeshan Asghar and his Chinese roommate Yu Hong Bo, 28 drove to the Athalassa park where they used tape to gag 38-year-old contractor Pavlos Christodoulou. He was still alive after being beaten on the head and thrown in the boot of his BMW.
Christodoulou’s wife, 32-year-old Magda Eleftheriou, is also facing premeditated murder and conspiracy charges along with the other two.
Christodoulou was bludgeoned and then burnt in the boot of his car on July 17 last year.
The court yesterday heard testimony from police officer Modestos Poyiadjis, who on July 22, had taken Asghar on a tour of the scenes he and Bo visited before and after the crime.
The tour is the object of a trial within a trial to determine its admissibility after the defence claimed it was not conducted with Asghar’s free will.
Poyiadgis testimony revealed a couple of aspects of the case that were unknown until now.
According to the officer, during the tour, Asghar led them to the park where they gagged Pavlos who was still alive after the beating he had received in the lobby of a building on Papacostas Street on the other side of town.
“We heard Pavlos breathe heavily in the boot; he was still alive and we went there to gag him with tape,” Asghar said, according to Poyiadjis.
The court heard that the Pakistani held the boot open while Bo taped the victim’s mouth.
Asghar also led police to a building where they filled a bucket with water to wash off the blood from the boot of the car.
He also told officers that they went to the scene where they burnt the BMW twice.
The first time they remembered that they had forgotten to get rid of the pipes used to beat Pavlos, so they drove to an area nearby where they dumped them in a skip before returning to torch the car.
The last scene was an area in Makedonitissa, near the American radio station.
There, the two defendants planned to steer the car off a cliff, with Pavlos in the driver’s seat.
After that they would have set it on fire to make it look like an accident, the court heard.
Earlier in the procedure, the court saw a videotape of the tour, which despite the defence’s suggestions, did not contain any evidence of harassment of the suspects by the police.
Pavlos Angelides insisted that the police had removed the sound from various sections of the footage, though the police cameraman explained that the tape had not been touched.
