A 22 YEAR-old Turkish man has been sentenced to 12 months in prison by Nicosia District Court after he took on a false identity in an attempt to be reunited with his lover in England, Phileleftheros reported yesterday.
The son of Turkish settlers in Famagusta, Reslen Guren was working as a waiter in the mixed buffer zone village of Pyla when he fell in love with a young British tourist who regularly visited the village. But the girl had to return to England, leaving Gurel determined to follow her to the UK, reports said.
The court heard that a Turkish Cypriot friend living in occupied Pentayia felt sorry for Guren and agreed to give him his identity card.
Having doctored the identity card, Guren entered the free areas illegally last September and went on to obtain a birth certificate from Larnaca authorities.
His false identity went undetected for almost a year, until he applied for a Cypriot passport. The Cyprus Passport Department then discovered that Guren was not who he claimed to be, and he was arrested by police when he came to collect his new passport.
The Police Press Office said that Guren had been found guilty of eight separate charges, including assuming a false identity and giving false information to authorities.
“Guren is now in prison and he will serve the longest sentence applicable out of the eight charges brought against him, which is 12 months,” the police press officer said.
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.
