The chief warden at the central prisons was spotted carrying bags containing papers, a witness told Nicosia criminal court on Thursday in the ongoing trial concerning the alleged theft of thousands of documents from the prisons complex.

Testifying for the prosecution was a prison warden, who has served at the facility since 2017.

He was testifying about an incident that took place in November 2022, when, he said, he personally saw the chief prison warden hauling bags and walking out of the facility.

The witness at the time was posted at the X-ray machine at the gate of the prisons.

According to him, when he asked the chief warden – defendant number three in the trial – where he was going, the latter told him: “You saw nothing.”

The defendant in question is the person in whose residence police discovered thousands of prisons documents in April 2025.

From what the witness could see, the bags contained sheets of paper. But he could not say for certain what kind of documents they were.

Asked by lead prosecutor Vasilis Bisas why at the time he did not further press the defendant for an explanation about the bags, the witness said the defendant was the prison director’s “right-hand man” – and no one dared question him.

As for then-prison director Anna Aristotelous – also a defendant – the witness said that during the time in question she was away from the facility.

He also recalled that rumours were circulating that Aristotelous was about to leave her post. In addition, the word around the prisons was that the offices of the director were being “emptied out”.

Regarding the November 2022 incident, the witness said he saw defendant number three exit the prisons gate, walk over to his personal vehicle, and drive off.

He saw no one else accompanying the chief warden.

The bags hauled by the chief warden carried the label ‘Prisons Department’.

The witness said he was suspicious of the chief warden’s demeanour – particularly the fact that the warden had placed a jacket over his shoulders, apparently in an attempt to conceal the bags from the prison cameras.

He later told a colleague about what he had seen, and the two of them joked that the chief warden would “end up in jail for this”.

When the witness later saw the news about the discovery of the prison documents in the house of the third defendant, he was not surprised.

The trial continues on November 23, when the defence will cross-examine the same witness.

On trial are Aristotelous, former prisons deputy director Athena Demetriou, five prison wardens and a former employee of the prisons who is now a police officer.

They have all pleaded not guilty.

The indictment includes conspiracy to commit a felony, abuse of power, violation of official confidentiality, personal data processing offenses, theft by a civil servant, violation of the security rules for classified documents and illegal possession of property.

The documents cache was found in April 2025 in the residence of Panayiotis Tsolias, the chief prison warden.

Police had been searching the premises as part of an investigation into a different case.

Many of the documents are marked ‘confidential’ and ‘secret’ and are believed to have been removed illegally from the central prisons between November and December 2022.