Lawyers question if police drugs chief was referred to as Rambo

The legal team of prisons director Anna Aristotelous on Saturday said the state’s legal service had not correctly attributed the findings of independent criminal investigator Achilleas Emilianides.

This follows comments by Attorney-general Georgios Savvides on Wednesday, who said the report contained no evidence to support corruption claims against drug squad chief Michalis Katsounotos, after he was accused of colluding with a convict in the central prisons.

Aristotelous’ lawyers Giorgos Triantafyllides and Pambos Ioannides called on the AG to confirm whether Emilianides refers to Katsounotos as ‘Rambo’ in his finding.

The previous day the lawyers had asked Emilianides to “to refute the very serious accusations he seems to attribute against Mr Katsounotos in his report”. The content of the report was leaked on the Reporter website and in Politis newspaper.

“Mr Emilianides chose not to comment on the accusations and therefore did not deny them, therefore, we consider that what Politis and Reporter reported are completely accurate and true,” they added.

Moreover, they said the report states that “no one should be allowed to act in these ways, even describing Mr. Katsounotos like Rambo”.

The lawyers also noted that “all of the above are in complete contradiction to what the Legal Service stated in its announcement” and called on the AG to say whether or not the comments attributed to Emilianides were in fact made by him.

They explained that if these reports are in fact true, they “overturn the entire background upon which the decision to not prosecute was based”.

People have the right to know the real facts, the lawyers said.

Finally, they stated that they are waiting for the clear position of the attorney-general in relation to whether “the criminal investigator described Katsounotos as Rambo or not”.