Pafos Live 25 January 2024
A 12-year-old boy, the child of Syrian migrants, took his father's vehicle after midnight and started driving the streets.
At 2am on the Emba-Tala road, he saw from afar police car beacons and developing high speed to drive away, lost control of the vehicle which deviated from its course and ended up in a carob tree.
The twelve-year-old was not injured but was transported by ambulance to Paphos hospital as a precaution while the vehicle suffered extensive damage. The case is now also being dealt with by the District Welfare Office.
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The Pafos Assize Court sentenced today to seven years in prison two persons who were found guilty in a case of illegal possession of drugs with intent to supply to another person and money laundering.
They are a 36-year-old resident of Paphos and a 21-year-old resident of Nicosia, who were arrested last June by members of the Police, after a quantity of drugs had been found in their possession.
Specifically, on June 2, 2023, members of the YKAN (Paphos District Unit) had spotted in an area of Paphos, the 21-year-old placing five nylon packages in the 36-year-old's car.
It was found that the five packages contained cannabis, with a total gross weight of seven kilograms. As a result, both the 21-year-old and the 36-year-old, who was also at the scene, were arrested by YKAN members.
It is noted that during the arrest of the 36-year-old, who tried to flee, two members of the Police were slightly injured.
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The Famagusta District Court today imposed a five-year prison sentence on a 46-year-old man who was found guilty in a migrant smuggling case.
According to the Court's findings, the 46-year-old, in order to make a profit, provided assistance to migrants to enter the territory of the Republic of Cyprus illegally. These are 109 migrants, who had arrived in the Cape Greco area, by boat on October 28, 2023.
At the same time, the 46-year-old was also found guilty of the offence of money laundering.
The five-year prison sentence is effective from November 3, 2023, when the 46-year-old was taken into custody.
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Pafos Press
The Paphos District Court imposed a two-month prison sentence on Wednesday to a 21-year-old for driving under the influence of drugs.
According to the Assistant Police Director of Paphos Operations Michalis Nikolaou, the court also imposed on the 21-year-old six points of punishment as well as the deprivation of his driver's license for a period of six months, which begins after his release from prison.
The 21-year-old had been stopped as part of traffic controls to prevent traffic accidents and was found to be driving under the influence of drugs.
Mr Nikolaou stated that the coordinated operations for the prevention of traffic accidents continue.
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Filenews
The Nicosia District Court today found a doctor guilty of indecent acts against a patient.
After a hearing, the Court found the accused doctor unreliable and did not accept his version, with the complainant's testimony found to be credible. Following the conviction of the accused, the Court set a new hearing for mitigation speeches within the next month.
The complaint made by the young woman was made in the summer of 2020. According to the indictment, the doctor was facing four counts of indecent assault against the complainant, which were committed on the same day, one after the other.
According to the facts, the complainant had visited the doctor in question, who was a family friend, for certain tests, for which sedation was required. The young woman accuses the doctor of having regained consciousness after sedation, isolating her in his room and then performing indecent acts four times over a period of several minutes.
The defendant, in his affidavit, claimed that the accusations against him were lies, claiming that the complainant had hugged and kissed him, which the Court did not believe.
It should be noted that immediately after the incident, the complainant sent a message to a friend, describing what she experienced and then reported it to her mother, who was in the waiting area of the hospital.
It is noteworthy that the defendant had previously been convicted of similar offences. The case was registered a second time in court, after initially the defendant was not located by a private company to serve him with the summons. Eventually the case was withdrawn and when the call returned to the Police, steps were taken again to locate the doctor and the case was re-registered in Court.
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Filenews 24/1
A coordinated operation was carried out today by the Police in Larnaka, in the context of which a stolen car, various items, believed to be stolen products and a small quantity of drugs, were found. At the same time, during the operation, two persons were identified and arrested, against whom judicial arrest warrants were pending.
They are a 34-year-old and a 26-year-old woman wanted for facilitating investigations into various offences, including unlawful possession and transport of a firearm and explosives and carrying a weapon to incite terror.
The 34-year-old and the 26-year-old were located and arrested in a hotel room in Larnaca. During a search following their arrest, sums of money, electronic devices, jewellery and other valuables, believed to be stolen, were found in the room in question. Four nylon packages, containing methamphetamine, with a total gross weight of two grams, were also found.
Outside the hotel, a parked car, allegedly used by the two arrested, was spotted. It was found that the vehicle had been reported to the Police as stolen since January 17, 2024.
Various items were found inside the vehicle, including a sword and an axe.
The two arrested were detained to facilitate interrogations, while the case is being investigated by the Oroklini Police Station, in cooperation with the Larnaca ICF.
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Once again, it is clearly proven that ecstatic hooligans are in charge, with the police just a spectator and unable to impose order.
Despite the fact that 300 members of the Force were recruited for the game, however, the Apollon – AEL game, which was judged to be high risk, never started. The embarrassing events that took place before the start of the game cause concern since a few 24 hours earlier measures to combat violence in stadiums had been announced. Measures that did not work, since a portion of fans managed to pass a large number of flares and smoke canisters into the pitch.
In fact, the hooligans did not hesitate to throw these objects into the stands of Apollon, spreading panic and terror to families with young children who went to the stadium to watch the match. For the time being, no arrests have been made for what happened inside and outside the stadium, with the police pinning their hopes on the detection of the perpetrators on the stadium's closed-circuit surveillance.
According to information from the Police in Limassol, a little girl, whose firecracker fell next to her, was injured and as a result her hearing was affected. A woman also was hit by a flare, causing her sweatshirt to catch fire.
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An explosion shook the area of Agia Fyla at dawn and mobilized the Police in Limassol.
The target of the new bombing was the house belonging to a 66-year-old pensioner. According to the Police, around 03:15 in the morning there was an explosion at the main entrance of a residence, owned by a 66-year-old woman, in Agia Fyla.
Members of the Police were called to the scene, where it was determined that the explosion was due to an improvised explosive metal device of low power, placed on the floor in front of the main door of the house. The explosion damaged the door.
The scene remains cordoned off and at first light of day new investigations and examinations will be carried out on the spot.
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A 69-year-old Greek Cypriot man was found guilty by the Larnaca District Court of indecent acts outside a primary school in Larnaca while students were coming to school. After a hearing, the defendant was found guilty on Friday of two counts of indecent acts.
Upon hearing the court's verdict, the defendant reacted strongly, tore up the verdict and cursed the judge, resulting in his arrest. Today's (24/1) proceedings before the Larnaca District Court, which was set for the imposition of a penalty, were also eventful. The accused, who appears without a lawyer, reacted and disagreed with the decision, so the proceedings were postponed and rescheduled for January 31.
The offences were committed between the dates of November 24 and December 8, 2022 outside a primary school in Larnaca. The main prosecution witness in the case was a school traffic warden, who testified that she had seen the 69-year-old commit unconfessed indecent acts outside the school several times. Police located him on December 8, 2022, following another complaint by the school traffic warden, who testified that on the same day at 07:30 in the morning, while students were coming to school, she saw the 69-year-old committing the same obscene acts, which he had done 15 days earlier. He also testified that he had seen the man outside the school before.
The defendant, during cross-examination by the representative of the Prosecution, George Stavrou, denied the accusations and claimed that he often walks past the elementary school because he does not have a car. He also claimed that the school is centrally located and that if he had done what he was accused of, other people would have seen him and taken videos.
In its ruling, the Court found the school traffic warden a credible witness and found the defendant guilty, stating that he exhibited "socially acceptable and morally obscene behaviour which offends public decency and as such constitutes a criminally punishable indecent act".
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The Court of Appeal handed a 36-year-old a seven-month prison sentence for finding 96 grams of cannabis in 2016. At first instance the defendant was acquitted in 2021, but the decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal, which found that both the 36-year-old's genetic material found in some packages, as well as other facts, suggested that he had knowledge of the drugs.
The Court of Appeal, while agreeing that the quantity in question is not large compared to other cases to which it referred, nevertheless stressed that from another perspective one could say that it exceeds three times the threshold set by the Law for the legislative presumption.
The case, the Court notes, does not concern traders or traffickers of large quantities, but concerns another group of traders or traffickers or suppliers or sellers, namely those who supply the last link in the chain, namely the user.
We recall that since 2001 it has been said that although for users there was some margin (leniency) which narrowed over time, however, for traders it is difficult to find grounds for mitigation. A warning that was repeated in 2008, adding that the more they persist in wreaking havoc, the more they should be dealt with rigorously by the Courts, since severe penalties, where appropriate, are one of the available means of combating the phenomenon.
It is a matter of common sense that the aforementioned large quantities are eventually distributed to other merchants who, as a retail trade, will forward the smaller quantities (instalments) to the end customers-users. Who, as has already been said, are mainly young people and even minors.
We refer specifically to the fact that the disputed quantity of 96.41g It was carefully distributed in 27 individual packages, which (except one) had already been prepared and were in a plastic bag, while next to it there was an electronic scale and 75 banknotes of various denominations. We do not believe that there is any need to argue that the depreciation of the act lies precisely in participation in this chain of drug trafficking and distribution, which is indispensable to large traffickers, since without it it would not be possible to dispose of their illegal product, namely the scourge of drugs.
The Court held that the only appropriate sentence was that of imprisonment, rejecting a request for its suspension due to the circumstances of the defendant and the many years that have passed since the offence.
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The 47-year-old Syrian, who was arrested by the Famagusta ICF after allegedly being the migrant smuggler found yesterday in poor condition in a northernarka sailing adrift off Cyprus, is now facing a homicide offence.
After the death of the two-year-old girl, who was being treated at Makarios Hospital, he is also suspected of homicide. It is noted that the three-year-old sister of the girl who died and another child are being treated in critical condition at Makarios Hospital.
According to philenews, the 47-year-old had come to Cyprus two years ago and had applied for political asylum. It is then believed that he left through the occupied areas and that he joined a smuggling network that brought Syrians from Lebanon to Cyprus by boat. The suspect is alleged to be the navigator of the small eight-meter-long wooden boat that took on board 61 migrants, while its capacity was for a single-digit number of people.
The fateful voyage set off on January 18 from Lebanon to Cyprus, with police tests showing that the boat set off without a compass, GPS and other means of navigation and without enough fuel. Halfway through, according to the migrants' testimonies, the engine broke down and the boat was left adrift.
The journey from Lebanon to Cyprus is 20 hours. The smugglers' goal was to get the boat to Cyprus and report that it left the Syrian coast, a practice they follow in order not to be pushed back to Lebanon.
According to what the migrants said, they had water with them, not food. The water they had with them had a name indicating that it came from Lebanon and they said the migrants were instructed to throw it into the sea when days ago they saw a boat approaching them, which they believed was a port boat.
Under questioning, the 47-year-old allegedly claimed that once he disembarked the migrants in Cyprus, the smuggling network would hand over his share to his wife in Lebanon. In addition to homicide, he is suspected of conspiracy to commit a felony and offences related to migrant smuggling.
It is recalled that a large operation was set up yesterday morning by the JRCC to rescue the migrants, with the three children and one adult being transported unconscious, due to dehydration, by helicopters to hospitals. The rest of the migrants were taken to the Ayia Napa marina and seven of them, including three other children, were taken to hospitals.
