No-one ever convicted for killing of US ambassador 50 years ago

‘Justice has been poorly served’ – US embassy after shooting of Rodger Davies

Another 50th anniversary being marked this year is that of the shooting of the American ambassador Rodger Davies while he was inside the US embassy in Nicosia, for which no one was ever convicted.

On August 19, 1974, the ambassador, 53, and a Maronite Cypriot secretary at the embassy, Antoinette Varnava, 30, were killed while they sheltered in a corridor near his office as the building came under fire during a violent anti-US, anti-Nato protest following the second wave of the Turkish invasion on August 14.

Hundreds of angry protesters believed the US was complicit in allowing Turkey to further advance on the initial invasion on July 20.

The killings remain somewhat of a mystery to this day. No one was put on trial for murder though two men were eventually convicted on lesser weapons charges during a trial in 1977 that came about due to pressure from Washington. Adding insult to injury for the US government, both men were released after only 18 months. They claimed they were scapegoated.

At the time the US embassy was located opposite the Hilton, now the Landmark Hotel in Nicosia. The bullets that killed Davies and Varnava had been fired through the window of his office on the second floor and ricocheted off a wall into the corridor sometime between 12 noon and 1pm, though witness statements vary wildly.

Davies had arrived in Nicosia just a few weeks earlier with his daughter and son – only four days before the Greek-backed coup that led to the invasion. He was grieving the recent loss of his wife from cancer and hoped that life on a quiet Mediterranean island might help the family work through its grief and move forward. Antoinette, a Maronite and still just 30, had already worked at the embassy for a decade.

The ambassador was killed when a bullet struck him in the chest. Varnava rushed to his aid but was struck down with a bullet to the head.

According to an account by journalist and historian Makarios Droushiotis, a group of men armed with Kalashnikov rifles had climbed atop a building under construction – the Alpan building as it was known – opposite the embassy and at least one of them opened fire.

On being informed of the incident, Glafcos Clerides, then acting president, rushed to the embassy. Clerides gave instructions that the body be taken to a hospital. Soon after he called US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to convey his grief over the ambassador’s death. Kissinger reportedly demanded that Cypriot authorities investigate the incident and bring the culprits to justice.

But the ensuing probe got nowhere and the case was filed as unsolved. This, in turn, led to all sorts of conspiracy theories among the Cypriot public, such as that the CIA had Davies assassinated to keep him from speaking out about the coup against Archbishop Makarios, in which Davies was supposedly implicated.

The Americans continued to pressure the Cyprus government into solving the case. In 1976, on instructions from Makarios, the case was reopened.

This came about after pressure from Kissinger, a Wikileaks cable from him to the embassy in Cyprus reveals. “In view of the lack of any recent developments in the investigation, I believe it is time for a restatement of our position. Consequently, you [US ambassador] should seek an appointment with President Makarios for the specific purpose of discussing the Davies investigation. You should emphasise to Makarios my personal interest in this matter,” Kissinger wrote.

Clearly distrustful of the Greek Cypriots, the US insisted on taking an active role in the investigations. Questioning of witnesses took place at the US embassy.

The case was eventually brought to court with two defendants initially facing charges of homicide. Prosecutors subsequently decided to change the charges to illegal carrying of firearms, apparently wary that the murder charges would not stick. The court found the two defendants – G. Ktimatias, the alleged gunman, and N. Leftis – guilty as charged, sentencing them to seven and five years in prison, respectively. Their sentences were subsequently reduced and they were released after 18 months. Trial notes showed that Leftis at least did not carry the type of gun, a Marsip rifle, whose bullets could never have even reached the embassy grounds let alone enter a window.

Summaries of the trial as it happened and as transcribed in US embassy cables to the State Department that are available on Wikileaks detail the difficulty in pinning the killings on the suspects and contain the court’s reasoning for not doing so. There was an alleged conspiracy of silence, accounts of alleged witness tampering and inconsistent statements from one of the prosecution witnesses, a fireman, who allegedly had a personal grudge against one of the two men on trial and had been disciplined over it.  

A US embassy cable to the State Department following the court’s decision not to prosecute for the killings on June 10, 1977, said the court had rejected the fireman’s testimony concerning the presence of the accused in the building under construction because he had given Cyprus police three statements, citing three possible locations within the building where he had seen them.

“It rejected all testimony concerning the timing of the fatal shots because of the confusing and conflicting recollections of many witnesses (at least nine were cited),” the cable added. “It rejected the expert testimony of a senior surveyor and a police ballistics expert concerning the place from where the fatal shots were fired on the grounds that their information was not sufficiently specific,” the cable said.

The court concluded there was no evidence that the two accused had fired the bursts of shots that caused the killings, or had fired any other shots.

According to the cable, the embassy’s legal counsel had advised the ambassador that Makarios was “very angry” about the ruling. He felt the judges should have held any ruling until end of the proceedings and that it had prejudiced the balance of the overall trial.

The embassy, in its comments said: “We are left with the conclusion that justice has been poorly served…”

“Based on the ruling… we see no reason to be hopeful that any convictions on the lesser charges will result in sentences that could be regarded as appropriate or as a deterrent to any terrorist-inspired or other acts of violence against American officials,” it concluded.