Greek Cypriots arrested in the north face new charges

All five Greek Cypriots who were arrested in the north last month now face charges of privacy violations, trespassing, and breaching the peace, after appearing at the Trikomo district court on Thursday morning.

Those charges had initially only been levelled at two of the five Greek Cypriots, but on Thursday morning, all five were brought before the court in Trikomo.

According to newspaper Ozgur Gazete’s editor-in-chief Pinar Barut, who was present in court on Thursday, the court was informed that the case against all five is now ready, and that a trial can begin.

Defence lawyer Ugur Culhaoglu represented all five defendants and said that none of the five accepted the charges. He added that all five wish to be tried, and that the defence is “ready” for a trial to begin.

The prosecution said that cases against all five defendants regarding the charges of trespassing and breaching the peace were “ready”, but that the north’s chief public prosecutor’s office has not yet received a case file from the police regarding the charges of privacy violations.

This charge, they said, is “the most serious” of the three.

They then added that when the final file is submitted, all three charges can be combined into once case and a trial can begin.

Culhaoglu then said it would be the defence’s preference for all the charges to be combined, and with both sides in agreement on this matter, judge Cigdem Guzeler adjourned the case until August 28.

Barut said the police are expected to submit the case file related to the charges of privacy violations before the next hearing, and that as such, the trial will be able to begin on that day.

The five Greek Cypriots were then taken to military court on Thursday afternoon for the latest hearing of the other case brought against them, regarding their alleged illegal entry into the north on July 19, the day of their arrest.

Prosecutors have alleged that when the five crossed from the British base of Dhekelia into the north via the Strovilia crossing point, near Famagusta, one of the five failed to show an identity card, thus entering the north illegally, and the other four aided and abetted that alleged illegal entry.

Thursday’s hearing was the first fully-fledged trial hearing of the case, with three prosecution witnesses called to the stand to testify against the five Greek Cypriots, who have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The first witness was a police officer called Timucin Apaydin, who told the court that the car in which the five Greek Cypriots had crossed into the north had tinted rear windows.

As such, it was argued, it would have been impossible for the police on duty at the Strovilia crossing point to discern upon the receipt of four identity cards how many people were in the car.

Apaydin had taken a number of photographs of the car, which is currently parked outside a police station in Trikomo, and showed them to the court, with a prosecution lawyer at this point interjecting and saying that “you can see that a civil servant cannot see how many people are sat on the back seat because the windows are tinted”.

However, he did say that he had taken the photographs in the middle of the day, and that the lighting conditions would have been different when the five Greek Cypriots crossed into the north, given that they were recorded as having crossed at 4.15pm.

Barut said after the hearing that the level of tint on the windows in the photograph was no more than the car’s original specification.

In addition, the defence pointed out that the photographs taken outside the police station had been taken from “four or five metres away”, thus further reducing the visibility.

They also argued that this fact further reduced the photographs’ relevance to the case, given that when the five Greek Cypriots crossed into the north, their car was parked close enough to the police on duty for the identity cards to be handed to them without anyone getting out of the car.

At this point, Barut said, photographs taken from closer were also shown to the court, and that the police on duty “could very likely have seen the back seat of the vehicle” from such a distance.

The defence then asked Apaydin if it would have been possible for someone to see inside the vehicle if they “looked carefully”, with Apaydin saying, “yes, if they looked carefully, they would have been able to see”.

The second witness was another police officer, called Mustafa Sonmez, who was on duty at the Strovilia crossing point on July 19.

He told the court that his job is to “stop vehicles which are deemed suspicious” and to “prevent vehicles and pedestrians who attempt to cross without being processed”.

He said that July 19 was an “incredibly busy day” at the crossing point, and that “hundreds of vehicles and people” crossed on the day.

Additionally, he said, he had been made aware of the incident involving the five Greek Cypriots two days later, on July 21, with “nothing unusual” having happened on July 19.

“I did not stop the vehicle in question because I did not find it to be suspicious,” he told the court, before adding that he had not received any complaint about the vehicle from the person stationed in the booth where identity cards are processed, and as such “did not bother with it”.

He then said he did not remember the car’s registration number or colour because “many vehicles crossed that day”, before adding, “we do not search every vehicle which crosses with tinted windows”.

At this point, the defence demanded that the prosecution or the police produce CCTV footage from the crossing point from July 19. However, Sonmez told the court that all the CCTV cameras on the Turkish Cypriot side of the Strovilia crossing point have not worked since April.

He said that in April, teams from the Turkish Cypriot Famagusta municipality had carried out excavation work near the crossing point with the aim of upgrading the town’s sewerage system, but that they had “dug in the wrong place” and broken the CCTV system.

The defence then asked, “what do you mean? Have there been no security cameras working at the Strovilia crossing point for three months?”, with Sonmez answering in the affirmative.

He confirmed that other computer-based systems, including the identity card processing software, had remained online, and said that it is not his responsibility to ensure that the number of people in any given vehicle corresponds to the number of identity cards processed.

“If there were five people in the vehicle and four of them were processed, this is the responsibility of the person in the booth,” he said.

The final witness was Zafer Yildiz, the police officer who had been tasked with preparing the entry and exit logs of the five arrested Greek Cypriots.

He told the court that the Greek Cypriot who stands accused of having entered the north illegally had entered the north legally 325 times between January 1, 2022, and the arrest – around once every four days.

While the exact number of legal crossings made by the other four Greek Cypriots was not stated in court, Barut said all four had crossed “hundreds of times” during the two-and-a-half-year period presented in court.

Yildiz also told the court that prior to July 19, the suspect who stands accused of having entered the north illegally had most recently entered the north on July 9.

The defence at this point asked the court, “why would one of these people, who have all legally entered the north hundreds of times, suddenly enter illegally, and why would the others aid and abet such a thing?”.

After the end of the hearing, Barut made reference to the health of the suspects, saying that they were “struggling to stand” during the hearing and that they were as such provided with chairs midway through.

The court announced that the next three hearings will take place on August 27, August 28, and August 29, with the Greek Cypriots to remain in custody at least until their next hearing.