THE wife of a murdered man arranged his meeting with his killers and was also involved in the plotting of the plan, the Nicosia Assizes Court heard yesterday.
Defendant Magda Eleftheriou, 32, was implicated in the murder of her husband by her Pakistani lover and co-defendant Zeeshan Asghar, 22, whose account of the fatal day in July last year, was yesterday heard in court after it was ruled admissible following a trial within a trial.
Magda’s husband, contractor Pavlos Christodoulou, 38, was bludgeoned and then burned in the boot of his BMW.
Magda, Asghar, and his Chinese roommate Yu Hong Bo, 28, have been charged in connection with the murder.
Asghar had given the police a tour of all the locations involved in the crime on July 22, 2004.
First he took them to a flat in Palouriotissa, the first flat he was renting with Bo and his girlfriend.
Along with the locations, police also submitted the defendant’s commentary regarding the various scenes.
He told them that the initial plan had been to kill Pavlos at the flat but after discussing it with Magda and Bo they decided against it and started looking for a new flat.
Asghar also showed officers the exact spot on Ioannis Polemis Street – the flat where he lived at the time of the murder – where Magda sat in her car the day before the murder and arranged the meeting with Pavlos.
And it was just a few steps from there that she parked Pavlos’ BMW earlier that day when she took it to Asghar to drive and get the hang of it.
The court heard how Asghar hid behind the door in the building on Papacostas Street, while Bo stood on the stairs when Pavlos walked in on Saturday, July 17.
“As soon as Pavlos entered I heard him talk to John (Bo); I hit him on the head with the metal rod,” Asghar told police.
The two then dragged Pavlos and put him in the boot of his white BMW.
At Stadiou Street nearby, the defendants parked Bo’s motorcycle and walked to Papacostas Street.
The court had previously heard that the two planned to drive the car to a deserted area in Makedonitissa while one of them would follow on the motorcycle.
There, they would have rolled the car off a cliff with Pavlos in the seat to make it look like an accident.
But their plan was upset after police picked up the motorcycle, which they thought had been stolen and abandoned there.
The prosecution also attempted to submit Asghar’s second statement to police, given on July 22.
As expected, the defence objected and a trial within a trial, the seventh since the trial began on February 14, was ordered.
The defence claimed that the statement was only given after Asghar was tortured by police the night before.
