Police were gearing up for an anti-immigrant protest in Nicosia on Wednesday, despite assurances it would be cancelled.

Speaking during the House legal affairs committee, police chief Stelios Papatheodorou was pressed my deputies to answer whether the protest would in fact take place.

Giving a half-shrug, he said he believed it will go ahead. “We are operating on the basis that it will.”

Asked by the Cyprus Mail after the committee session, Papatheodorou confirmed the police was preparing for the protest to take place as planned outside the presidential palace on Wednesday night at 7:30pm.

A day earlier, organisers said the situation would have sent the wrong message and cancelled the protest.

“We believe that an out-of-control situation on Wednesday would turn us into scapegoats of the failed and incompetent policies of governments over the years, including the current one. We understand that they want to burden us with responsibilities that belong to them,” the group called Mass Deportations Now said.

Taking no chances, staff at the foreign ministry near the palace have been asked to leave earlier at 4pm, for their safety.