By Jean Christou
ONE HUNDRED and twenty six people known to be dead have been removed from the missing list, government spokesman Michalis Papapetrou said yesterday, as the row rumbled on over who was to blame for failing to inform the relatives.
The official figure for missing persons now stands at 1,491. Two other people, Andreas Kasapis and Zinon Zinonos, both 16, were also taken off the list after their remains were identified through DNA testing, the spokesman said.
He admitted that the handling of the missing issue by governments and other involved parties had been haphazard when it came to informing the relatives.
“The whole issue is very serious,” he said. “It is a fact that when the list was being made it was handled in a wishy-washy way,” he said.
Papapetrou said the relatives of the 126 would be informed, but said there were no plans to resurrect the committee, headed by former Education Minister Cleri Angelides, assigned to carry out the task for years ago.
The authorities have had testimonies on the fate of the 126 for several years, but have only now officially taken them off the list.
An attempt to inform relatives in 1995 failed when their representative Father Christoforos Christoforou advised them not to accept any information on the death of their loved ones unless scientific proof was produced. The government at the time decided to shelve the plan because of the reaction of the relatives themselves, Papapetrou said yesterday.
Christoforou, who later resigned from the relatives’ committee, insisted yesterday that he had acted correctly in advising families not to accept the information offered by the government at the time.
The priest, whose own son is on the missing list, said he was proud of how he had handled the issue.
“I intervened and said no to Mrs Angelides. I said to the families they not accept what Mrs Angelides was going to tell them if exhumations and scientific tests were not carried out. You can’t accept your loved one is dead. This is what I insisted upon,” Christoforou said. “The only one who stood up and handled the issue of the missing correctly is Father Christoforou.”
He said he had taken it upon himself to tell a relative of one of the 126 that his loved one was dead. “He told me ‘if you weren’t my friend and a priest I would kick you out. Show me his grave and his remains and DNA proof and then I’ll believe you’.”
In a letter to Defence Minister Socrates Hasikos yesterday,
Christoforou accused the minister of using innuendo to criticise the way he had handled the missing issue and said Hasikos did not know the missing issue as well as he did.
He also challenged the minister to a televised debate on the issue.
“I have a clear conscience,” he said. “I served the issue of the missing for 24 years, and I defended this issue with the power of my soul.”
Referring to the former Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs, the late Leandros Zachariades, Christoforou said: “Everyone knows that he wanted us to accept presumption of death. I did not, and the committee did not and the government did not accept this, and nor will I.”
Current relatives’ committee representative Agapios Chiratos said yesterday that the government should proceed to inform the relatives of the 126 that they were dead, even though their remains had not been located.
Chiratos also said there was a possibility that up to 23 other people on the missing list could have been buried in the free areas.
“Without knowing what’s in the files, I assume the government’s evidence is solid and there are witness accounts that these 126 people are dead,” Chiratos said.
He insisted that no matter what mistakes might have been made by the relatives committee in the past, the responsibility still lay with respective governments.
“The government should without further delay, based on the evidence it believes it has, inform the relatives,” he said.
“Whether or not they accept the information is a different matter.”
