Pafos Live 17 December 2025
The concurrent prison sentence imposed by the Paphos Criminal Court on a defendant for a case of importation, possession and possession for the purpose of supplying other persons with 8 kilograms and 154.9 grams of cannabis was increased today by the Court of Appeal to 12 from 9 years.
According to an announcement by the Legal Service, this development comes after an appeal that the Attorney General registered for a manifestly inadequate sentence imposed.
"The position of the Attorney General was, among other things, that the Criminal Court did not take into account the need to impose stricter and dissuasive penalties on offenses of this nature," it is added.
The drugs had been found by the authorities of the Republic in a box that arrived at Larnaca airport from the USA. The Police carried out a controlled delivery of the box and the person who signed as the recipient was sentenced to six months in prison for the crime of forgery, after it became clear that, although unsuspecting, he acted at the urging of the "importer" by signing on his behalf, the same announcement explains.
However, he continues, on the "importer", a person who was found to have been involved in the whole operation of importing drugs into the Republic with the aim, after receiving them, of channelling them into the domestic market ensuring similar benefits, the Criminal Court imposed a nine-year concurrent prison sentence on three offenses.
Hearing the appeal filed by the Attorney General for the case, it is stated, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Criminal Court did not sufficiently measure the need to impose dissuasive penalties on drug offenses and that it was wrong not to give any weight to the facts of the commission of the offense.
"In the present case, we find that the Court of First Instance correctly managed the personal circumstances of the respondent, for the purpose of personalizing the sentence, attributing to them the importance required by the case law. In essence, we find, however, that no weight was wrongly given to the facts of the commission of the offense, which were particularly aggravating for the respondent, since in his plan for the import and sale of a large quantity of drugs, he implicated third parties, unsuspecting persons, and one of them committed the crime of forgery, in order to serve the commission of the above offenses by the respondent", states the Court of Appeal in its decision.
As a result, the Court of Appeal ruled that the concurrent sentences of nine years in prison should be replaced by concurrent sentences of 12 years in prison, the announcement of the Legal Service concludes.
