North murderer suspects jailed pending trial

The two men accused of murdering 45-year-old Ayca Alav in Nicosia’s walled city were on Wednesday jailed for three months pending their trial.

In court, it was once again heard how the pair committed the murder.

The police’s representative in court explained that on December 22, the two suspects, one of whom worked at Alav’s Hit Bit shop, proceeded to enter the shop tie her arms and legs with a seatbelt before placing duct tape across her mouth.

It had earlier been revealed that having killed her, the pair made their way to the bureau de change Alav owned, which is located near the Kyrenia gate, from where they stole an “undetermined amount” of cash.

They added that the pair crossed to the Republic on the same day, and that the following day, an autopsy revealed Alav’s cause of death to be having her airways closed and neck injuries.

They said the pair were identified and arrested in Pyla on January 8, though this fact remains a point of question and controversy.

Following the Turkish Cypriot police’s announcement of the pair’s arrest in Pyla, the co-chairman of the Bicommunal Technical Committee on Crime Sali Can Doratli told Yeni Duzen his committee had taken “no action” on the matter.

Later, the Republic’s police announced that they had arrested three men, aged 37, 46, and 47, regarding “a case of abduction with the purpose of secret and unjust imprisonment”.

They later confirmed to the Cyprus Mail that the three were arrested on suspicion that they abducted “the two victims [who] … appear to be the same people who are suspected of having committed a murder in northern Nicosia in December.”

In other words, the three arrested are the same people who brought the two murder suspects to the north after they escaped to the Republic.

While the facts of their eventual arrest remain a point of question, the pair suspected of murder do not deny the crime they committed.

Speaking in court on Wednesday, one of the two suspects said, “we did not want to do this, we are very sorry. What we did was a very bad thing. We are sorry, please forgive us.”

Shortly afterwards, the other said “we are sorry, we did not want to kill the woman, we never had such intentions. We are very sorry. We committed a crime and there will be a punishment for it.”

The pair will remain behind bars for a maximum period of three months subject to trial.