THREE Aeroporos brothers were yesterday acquitted of charges of attempting to murder gambling club owner Antonis Fanieros in Larnaca on May 29 last year.
The Nicosia assizes ruled that there was no prima facie case for brothers Hambis, 35, Andros, 30, and Panicos, 25, Aeroporos to answer, dismissing the prosecution case.
Chief prosecution witness Tassos Simellides has testified that Hambis was the instigator, Andros the architect and Panicos the hit man for the drive- by shooting. Simellides, 28, is serving a nine-year sentence for driving the get-away motorbike for the attack.
He told the court that Panicos shot at 57-year-old Fanieros with a machine- gun as he sat behind him on a motorbike. The father-of-three also described how the three brothers forced him to take part in the shooting and how Andros planned the hit.
Defence lawyer Efstathios Efstathiou labelled Simellides a liar who had cut a deal with police to help secure the conviction of the Aeroporos brothers in exchange for seeing out his sentence at a country estate and passage abroad afterwards.
The high-profile, 12 month, trial was conducted under heavy police security, and Simellides and his family were shadowed by police bodyguards throughout, for fear an attempt might be made on the chief witnesses life.
Simellides and his family were kept under police guard at the country home of a former police chief.
In its decision, the court criticised police for the special treatment they had given their chief witness.
The three-bench court also stated that there were contradictions in both Simellides’s and police testimonies. One police witness had told the court the bike that the hit-men had escaped on was red, whereas another said it was blue.
The court noted that no finger-prints belonging to any of the Aeroporos brothers were found on the motorbike, nor on any of the other items found by police with Simellides’ help.
Fanieros narrowly survived the attack outside his gambling club in Larnaca, despite being hit in the neck as he came under a hail of machine-gun fire. The attack was described as a gangland hit, part of an on-going feud between Limassol and Larnaca gangs allegedly vying for control of drugs, prostitution and gambling rackets.
The three Aeroporos brothers, arrested in June last year after they were implicated by Simellides, have been in custody for over a year.
