The father of a three-year-old boy who fell to his death from a fourth-floor window of a hotel in Chlorakas, Paphos was on Tuesday charged with causing death by recklessness and released on bail.

Charges brought against the 37-year-old British national were read out at the Paphos district court on Tuesday afternoon, and he was then released on a €20,000 bail, placed on the government’s stop list, and ordered to both surrender his travel documents and appear in person once a week at the Paphos police station.

He will next appear at the Paphos district court on July 31.

Meanwhile, Paphos police assistant operations director Michalis Nikolaou told the Cyprus Mail that “a quantity of alcohol” had been found in the man’s blood during testing, and that “this fact will be evaluated by the court which will hear the case”.

The man and his family were holidaying at the hotel when the boy fell to his death on the evening of July 12, the first day of their holiday.

The father was arrested later that evening, and initially remanded in custody for eight days after his first court hearing on Monday last week.

That remand prompted high-profile criminal lawyer Christos Triantafyllides to remark that “in 46 years as a lawyer, I have never seen anything like this”, and described the decision as a “major mistake”.

“From the moment this is not a homicide investigation, there are only two possible scenarios, negligence or an accident,” he said, before adding that neither scenario would typically entail an eight-day remand following an initial court hearing.

“What could this man possibly do if he were released? … People are detained only where there is a risk of absconding, a risk of repeating the offence, or in cases such as murder. None of those reasons applies here,” he said.