Aids case fisherman insists he is innocent

FISHERMAN Pavlos Georgiou, jailed for knowingly giving Aids to his British lover Janette Pink and freed two weeks ago, last night stuck to his claim that he was innocent.

Georgiou, 40, alleged on Sigma TV that he had been victimised by scheming relatives of Pink, 45, who is now suffering from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

“I never hid the fact that I had Aids,” Georgiou said. “It was Janette herself who wasn’t convinced her boyfriend was a carrier of Aids.”

Georgiou was granted a presidential pardon on December 31, five months after Larnaca district court jailed him for 15 months for giving Pink the virus that causes Aids.

Pink, from Basildon in Essex, testified that Georgiou kept her in the dark about his condition, and of the fact that his wife had also died of an Aids- related illness.

She said he never took precautions during their affair, a claim Georgiou denied. The court accepted her evidence in its entirety.

“What makes me believe I am free right now is that Janette was struggling with her conscience for six months and she couldn’t sleep at night,” Georgiou said yesterday.

Pink moved to Cyprus in September 1993 after divorcing her accountant husband. Some weeks later she met Georgiou in Ayia Napa.

The two were lovers from early 1994 until mid-1996, when Pink, who had by then developed full-blown Aids, returned to Britain for treatment. It was then that her relatives notified the authorities here.

Georgiou said his affair with Pink was not a cheap fling.

“She lived in my house with my children, and her children at some point, we just didn’t get married. She was my wife, she was the mother of my children I can say, their second mother.”