The Nicosia criminal court on Tuesday rejected a request made by the defence for the release of documents and electronic files in the case against former prison director Anna Aristotelous and seven other defendants regarding the alleged leaking of classified documents.

According to the court, the non-release of those documents is “a necessary measure for the protection of public interest”.

Meanwhile, Aristotelous’ lawyer Chris Triantafyllides said that at the next hearing, he will raise the matter of the involvement of prosecution lawyer Vasilis Bissas in the case, given Bissas’ alleged close ties to another of the defendants.

At a previous hearing, Bissas rejected Triantafyllides’ position, saying the legal service had been aware of his personal circumstances, including his ties with the defendants, when it cleared him to handle the case.

The charges all eight defendants face include those of conspiracy to commit a felony, the theft of state property involving 48,432 documents, the theft of 370 architectural plans of the prison building, and the theft of 431 other items, including digital discs and electronic devices.

The documents were found during the search of the home of a prison warden on April 10 last year as part of an investigation into an alleged scam involving a convict buying items from the prison canteen and selling them to other inmates at an inflated price.

It was alleged that the warden had taken a cut of the profit to look the other way.

At the time, newspaper Politis said the documents had been taken out of the prison via an external staircase near the prison’s administrative offices, and that they had been hidden in cloth bags. It was also reported that on some occasions, prisons department vehicles were used to transport the documents out of the prison.

Aristotelous was suspended from her role at the defence ministry in June last year, with Triantafyllides saying at the time that she had bene made a “scapegoat”.

He spoke of a “cannibalistic operation”, which he said “eroded the presumption of innocence” and accused the government of “character assassination”.