‘Rioting’ lawyer given ten months behind bars

Lawyer Panayiotis Kleovoulou, who led an attack against a gathering of left-wing organisations at the Limassol public university in 2017, was sentenced to ten months in jail on Friday.

The 63-year-old man was found guilty to charges related to rioting, causing of inciting violence, conspiracy to commit misdemeanour, assault, causing actual bodily harm and public disturbance.

The court imposed various sentences, with the longest being ten months for rioting.

“Behaviour of this kind has no place in a democratic society,” Judge Christos Rasopoulos said in his ruling.

The attack took place on May 5, 2017, when around 20 masked men entered an event organised by a left-wing movement under the Greek name ‘Granazi’ and another roughly translated as ‘we want a federation’ at the Cyprus university of technology (Tepak). The hooded men, carrying clubs and throwing stones at the attendees, injured at least four people and caused a disturbance.

According to the court’s findings, Panagiotis Kleovoulou had a leading role and was at the scene without wearing a hood. He was moving among the hooded men, and at one point he stood impassively and with a cold stare in the midst of the attackers.

At one point he said to the hooded men “stop, go away” and as they were leaving, they threw leaflets of the National Liberation Movement (KEA), whose leader was the convicted man.

Kleovoulou also grabbed one of the prosecution witnesses by the neck and punched him in the face and head.

Although Kleovoulou was seen and photographed among the 20 black-clad and hooded men, he initially denied any connection with the episodes and told police he went to TEPAK just to listen and take part in the event.

The case was handled on behalf of the Legal Service by the public prosecutor, Panikos Avraamidis. In the 63-year-old’s favour, was his personal and family circumstances as well as his clean criminal record.

Before he was handed his sentence, his lawyer asked for maximum leniency and for a suspended sentence citing various mitigating factors. Among the reasons for mitigating the sentence, the 63-year-old’s counsel referred to the personal circumstances of his client who “is a person of advanced age and with a clean criminal record”, the long period of time that had elapsed since the day the offences were committed and the “consequences that the media and social networking media had brought and continue to bring about”.

Also raised as a ground for mitigation was the fact that the defendant is a director of a law firm and that imposing immediate imprisonment would amount to punishing staff and other people who chose the defendant’s office to handle their cases.