By Anthony O. Miller
TWO SIERRA Leone men were released from jail yesterday after serving two months for illegally entering Cyprus last July and nearly nine extra months because the Migration Department did not know what else to do with them, their lawyers said.
Emek Mba, 20, and John Moore, 22, are the third group of Sierra Leone boat people in two weeks to be freed from detention beyond their sentences following a habeas corpusfiling by Nicosia lawyer Yiannakis Erotocritou.
Erotocritou, who is also Philippines Consul in Cyprus, said another handful of Sierra Leone boat people were still being held, despite completing their sentences, in Block 10, the Nicosia jail for illegal immigrants.
“They should not have been kept in custody beyond their sentence,” Pavlos Erotocritou, co-consul with his father, said in freeing the pair yesterday in Nicosia District Court.
The two men were jailed for two months last July for illegally entering Cyprus from the Turkish-occupied northern without any identity papers, Pavlos said.
Both men fled execution by rebels in the civil war in their homeland and “cannot go back to Sierra Leone because their lives are in danger,” Pavlos said.
Moore and his uncle, a Freetown newspaper editor, were taken hostage, beaten and sentenced to death by the rebels before escaping to nearby Guinea, Pavlos said.
Mba, a student, was kidnapped from his school by rebel soldiers and threatened with death unless he joined them. He refused and would have been killed, had he not also fled to Guinea, Pavlos said.
The pair made their way by boat from Guinea to Turkey, where they paid another boat captain to take them and several compatriots to Greece. Instead, they were set ashore in occupied northern Cyprus, where they crossed into the Republic last July.
“We are seeking refugee status” for the pair, Pavlos said, adding that Moore has already sought asylum help from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The two men are being housed at the Crown Hotel in Nicosia at state expense, pending Welfare and Labour department contact for help in meeting their bills and getting temporary work permits.
On May 10, Erotocritou sprung Ikri Johnson from Block 10, after he also had spent some nine months beyond his sentence for illegally entering Cyprus last July. He, too, had fled Sierra Leone’s civil war.
Johnson, Mba and Moore spent part of their illegal detention in the Old Famagusta Jail. They were beaten there last October 23 when Rapid Reaction (MMAD) Police stormed the lockup to quell a riot by other, mainly black African, boat people being held there pending deportation, Pavlos said.
Johnson has also filed an asylum application with the UNHCR.
None of the half-dozen senior Migration Department officials the Cyprus Mailcontacted was available for comment yesterday.
