Suspect in long-running drug trial released

The Larnaca criminal court on Wednesday found Georgios Christodoulou, 45, not guilty of trafficking 1.5 kilos of cocaine in 2019 after the main prosecution witness was deemed unreliable.

Christodoulou, also known as Zavrantonas, was found not guilty on three charges related to a drugs’ bust on May 25, 2019 where two other men were arrested during a police stop in Aradippou. After their arrest, the two men had pointed to Christodoulou as the mastermind.

Shortly after the arrests of the two – 25-year-old Ioannis Evangelou and his brother-in-law Marios Georgiou, 34, also known as Mariouthkias – Christodoulou managed to flee to the north of the island when he learned that he was wanted in connection with the case.

He was arrested in the north in March 2020 and later returned by the Turkish Cypriot side through the bicommunal crime committee in August the same year.

The two other suspects in the drugs case, Evangelou and Georgiou, had been placed in the witness protection programme since they were providing police with information on Christodoulou, who they said was the head of the operation.

In January 2020, they were sentenced to six years and two years respectively in connection with the drugs case. Georgiou was however released early due to emergency measures to avoid overcrowding in prison due to coronavirus.

He was then shot dead in April 2021 on the Meneou-Pervolia road.

On December 28, 2021, Andreas Evangelou, 53, the father of the younger convict, the still-imprisoned Ioannis Evangelou, was also shot dead six times in his back outside his Larnaca house.

While still on trial in the drugs case, on February 3, 2022, police arrested Christodoulou and two other persons as suspects in the murder of Evangelou senior, but they were all later released as it was not possible to establish their involvement in the case.

Christodoulou was ultimately charged on three counts in the 2019 drugs case relating to possession, intent to sell and conspiracy to commit a crime.

During the trial, Ioannos Evangelou testified against Christodoulou but the criminal court rejected his testimony as unreliable based mainly on the differentiation between his testimony and the statement he initially gave to police after his arrest.

As a result, the court ruled that the testimony could not be a sound basis for Christodoulou’s conviction and found him not guilty.

Both gangland-related murder cases remain unsolved.