By Alexia Saoulli
RAIN, hail or shine, the wife of convicted killer Ierotheos Christodoulou, alias Ropas, will continue her hunger strike outside the Presidential Palace until her husband is given a full pardon from his life sentence and the police ” admit their mistakes” , she said yesterday.
From morning till night, Mary Christodoulou says she will stand outside the Presidential Palace with her two children waiting to be heard, only sleeping in her car when it is too late to carry on her daily vigil.
” My husband is innocent,”she insists, maintaining that Ropas has been falsely imprisoned for the last three years and two months, but that no one cares about what she has to say.
Ropas, Nicos Nicolaou and Ara Haritounian were found guilty of the September 16, 1998, murder of 29-year-old Marios Panayides in Limassol.
An appeal against the verdict was rejected last year and since then Christodoulou has been lobbying for her husband’s release.
” He is not guilty and you have to help me prove that,”she told the Cyprus Mail yesterday, claiming evidence had been lost during the course of the original trial and that police malpractice had denied her husband the right to prove himself innocent.
” Thankfully, everyone has been completely supportive of me during these past few difficult years without my husband and I’m not the only one that knows in my heart he’s innocent”she said.
Ever since her husband was jailed, Christodoulou, her two children and ” countless others who knew him”have continued to believe he is innocent of the murder.
” My husband was in bed asleep at the time of the murder,”she insists. ” This is my last fight against the injustice that has been done to him.”
” If I was wrong, why is no-one in authority speaking out against me and calling me crazy?”she asks.
Christodoulou said her 15-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son had fortunately not suffered too much from the ordeal they’d had to endure. She said they were extremely ” loveable and well-liked”and had not been picked on by other children at school.
” They know their father is innocent and love him very much as he loves them.
” It is this love and unfailing trust in their father that gets them through this,”she said, adding this was why – against her wishes – they wanted to stand by her and share in her protest.
Christodoulou said though that it was tough for her, emotionally and economically, as she struggled to make ends meet on her salary and travelled back and forth to Nicosia with her children every Sunday to visit her husband.
” Although I have always worked, my husband contributed to our income and now I’m finding it difficult to juggle being a parent, collecting my children from school, taking them here and there, cooking, cleaning the house and working full time.”
Despite the difficulties she is facing, Christodoulou says she will continue her hunger strike – ” even if it means death”- until Attorney- general Alecos Markides can explain why the evidence of her husband’s innocence has gone missing and the police admit their faults during the course of the murder investigation.
” The police disgust me,”she said ” and although I’ve been crying out to be heard for months, the investigation into my husband’s case is never- ending.”
Christodoulou said people had been very supportive of her plight and even strangers had come up to express their support for her campaign.
Prison wardens say Ropas is a ” model prisoner” , she added.
If new evidence did appear to clear Ropas, a presidential pardon would be the only way to release him, since his appeal has failed. He would still, however, remain convicted before the law.
But Christodoulou said she did not care if her husband was guilty in the eyes of the law, as long as he was set free.
” He is my husband and as long as I know he is innocent that’s what counts.
” I just want him back home with me and our children and will do what it takes to see that he is released.”
Christodoulou hopes to see President Glafcos Clerides today to discuss her husband’s case.
