Cyprus Mail: News Articles in English, 98-12-30

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From: The Cyprus Mail at <http://www.cynews.com/>

Wednesday, December 30, 1998

CONTENTS

[01] Top civil servant jailed

[02] Turks claim new shooting, bases and UN find no evidence

[03] Synod decision sparks rift with Mount Athos

[04] 1998: a wasted year

[05] There's been more to 1998 than missiles

[06] US coast guard search for missing sailors from Cyprus ship

[07] Santa's Christmas burglary

[01] Top civil servant jailed

WATER Development Department (WDD) director Lakis Christodoulou was jailed for six months yesterday after being convicted of abuse of power.

The Nicosia District Court ruled that each of the 11 charges of abuse of position on which he was convicted carried a term of six months, which would run concurrently.

The usually dapper Christodoulou was visibly jolted by the ruling and refused to comment on leaving the Court yesterday.

His lawyer, Efstathios Efstathiou, did not say whether he would appeal against the sentence, simply saying that court decisions were not matter for public discussion.

Christodoulou changed his plea to guilty on the 11 charges earlier this month. He had earlier pleaded not guilty to an original 29 charges of abuse of authority, deceit and attempting to interfere with a police investigation.

The WDD director was charged after a police investigation uncovered employees and machinery belonging to the department on the building site of his out-of-town mansion.

Announcing sentence yesterday, Judge Haris Solomonides said that Christodoulou had abused his position and tarnished the public's trust in the civil service.

Solomonides said he had to take into account the fact that Christodoulou's wrong-doing was not a one-off instance, but had taken place over a two-year period and was made up of many violations.

He said that the punishment would have to be such as to deter people in Christodoulou's position from taking advantage of their position and the power that came with it.

Christodoulou's ill health, his previously clean criminal record, his family status, good conduct in Court and his admitting to the 11 charges were also taking into consideration.

In reference to Efstathiou's plea for leniency on the grounds of his client's ill health, Solomonides said this was no reason to rule out imprisonment, as good doctors were available at the prison.

Solomonides also said press interest in the case did not mean Christodoulou should escape a prison sentence. He added that it was the media's right to be present in Court and to publicise cases.

Christodoulou's jail sentence means he will lose his job and the thousands of pounds' worth of accumulated civil service pension and benefits.

Wednesday, December 30, 1998

[02] Turks claim new shooting, bases and UN find no evidence

THE TURKISH Cypriot side yesterday claimed shots had been fired at troops near occupied Famagusta for the third time in a week.

However, neither the Cyprus police, the British Bases nor the UN has turned up any evidence to back the claim.

According to reports from the north, gunmen opened fire on Turkish Cypriot troops from outside Ayios Nicolaos on British bases territory.

Turkish Cypriot officials said the assailants fired two shots at troops on duty before speeding off in a vehicle at around 6.40am.

They also warned that Turkish Cypriot armed forces would defend themselves if the attacks were repeated.

"Despite all the initiatives taken with regard to the United Nations and British officials, we observe with sorrow that sufficient and effective precautions have yet to be taken to prevent Greek Cypriot attacks," a statement from the north said.

However, Cyprus police said they had no reports of shots being fired. The British bases said they had received reports from the United Nations that shots had been fired north of the link road, but on investigation discovered nothing to support the claim.

"We were told by the UN," bases spokesman Captain Jon Brown said.

There is no buffer zone and no UN presence on the divide between the bases and the occupied areas.

Captain Brown said it was particularly difficult to ascertain the facts if the reports stated that a moving vehicle was involved. "By the time someone gets there to investigate, a car would be long gone," he said.

A UN spokesman said the matter was one for the British bases, but confirmed that it was peacekeepers who had passed on the reports to the bases after being informed by the Turkish Cypriot side. UN personnel had themselves heard nothing, the spokesman said.

He confirmed the alleged incident occurred at 6.40am. "There was a thunderstorm at the time, and I will say no more," he said.

On Monday, the regime in the north called for increased security along the area dividing the bases and the occupied north after earlier reports that shots had been fired at Turkish Cypriot sentry posts in the same area.

Eight shots were fired on Christmas Eve at around half past midnight according to reports, but nothing was found by the bases police.

Wednesday, December 30, 1998

[03] Synod decision sparks rift with Mount Athos

A GREEK monk was found guilty of immorality by the Cyprus Orthodox Church yesterday, after being accused of molesting nuns and giving them venereal disease.

The Holy Synod's decision condemning Elder Iosif of the Greek Mount Athos Monastery of Vatopedhi has already caused a rift between the Greek and Cypriot Orthodox Churches.

The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, under whose jurisdiction Mount Athos falls, yesterday issued a statement saying Elder Iosif was beyond reproach and that he was fully supported by Orthodoxy.

The statement says Elder Iosif is a monk "of sound character and morals, who is admired and enjoys the love and affection and trust of the mother Church".

But according to the Holy Synod in Cyprus, Elder Iosif is a pervert, who molested no less than seven nuns and infected them with sexual diseases 17 years ago.

Yesterday's marathon session of the Holy Synod of the Church of Cyprus agreed to go with the results of a report prepared by a two-man investigation team, which last week found Iosif guilty of immorality.

In a brief statement, a representative of the Synod said the testimony and a letter from the elder to a nun, along with the testimony of the Bishop of Paphos, had been proved to be valid.

The Synod representative said the "guilty verdict" would be passed on to the appropriate church authorities in Greece and Constantinople.

The Cypriot lawyers for the Greek monastery were yesterday outraged by the Synod decision.

Christos Clerides said such a decision was unheard of. He said the use of evidence based on testimony going back 17 years was not a valid way to reach such a decision.

Clerides also said the fact that the Bishop of Paphos, Iosif's "accuser", and the two members of the investigating committee were all members of the Holy Synod and participated in the decision made it ridiculous.

The Synod had also failed to invite Iosif to testify before it, the lawyer said, adding that in effect the decision meant nothing.

"It failed to afford the accused any opportunity of being heard. He was not even invited," Clerides said. "The decision is ridiculous and is of no legal value at all."

The lawyer said he was awaiting the instructions of his client on whether to proceed with legal action against Bishop Chrysostomos of Paphos.

It was he who publicised the allegations against Iosif, while levelling accusations against a Greek Cypriot abbot, a former protégé of the Greek monk.

The Synod last week threw out the Bishop's allegations of immorality against the cleric, Limassol Bishopric candidate Abbot Athanasios of Machairas.

Bishop Chrysostomos has consistently denied that his allegations against Athanasios have anything to do with his opposition to the Abbot's candidacy for Bishop of Limassol, the elections for which will take place in the new year.

Wednesday, December 30, 1998

[04] 1998: a wasted year

IN HIS zeal for re-election last February, President Glafcos Clerides made a string of pledges, hostages to fortune that would return to haunt him as the year wore by.

Cornered in a race too close to call, the incumbent pulled out all the stops, appealing to the electorate at what he insisted was a crucial stage in the national issue.

Clerides was the figure of continuity, the man on whose re-election the Americans were counting to launch their 'big push' and who would steer Cyprus towards membership of the European Union. Most importantly, he was the man in whose hands our defence was safe, who pledged again and again the deployment of the best anti-aircraft system that money could buy.

But as the year comes to a close, that missile system is heading, not for Paphos, but for Crete. America's big push is still to materialise: trouble- shooter Richard Holbrooke came once, came twice, and went off in search of success in Kosovo.

Cyprus settlement talks are at a complete standstill, with Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash refusing to return to the table until his statelet gains full international recognition.

Only on the European front can the government boast progress - harmonisation gathers speed, economic indicators are favourable and European officials heap lavish praise on Cyprus' performance.

But politically, problems lie ahead, with member states waking up to the real dangers of importing the Cyprus Problem into the Union.

So why has Clerides failed so singularly to deliver? In part, because his promises were so unrealistic.

Denktash had walked out of settlement talks and suspended all bi-communal activities just months earlier in protest at the EU's decision to open accession talks with the Republic. There was nothing in February to indicate that he would return.

And far from returning to the talks, 1998 has seen the Turkish side increasingly distance itself from efforts to reunite the island in a bi- communal federation. An American initiative did indeed materialise in the spring, but Washington never had the will to force Turkey to make concessions.

Holbrooke did come twice, in March and in May, but he duly left without having achieved anything more than the inauguration of a bi-communal telephone exchange. He has not returned since.

Bitter at the EU's decision to open the door to Cyprus while shutting it on Turkey, Denktash told Holbrooke he wanted international recognition of his 'Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus' and suspension of Cyprus' EU membership bid before he would return to the negotiating table.

And the United States - itself piqued at Brussels' snub of its Turkish Nato ally - was unwilling to pressure Denktash and Ankara to change their stance.

Those who expected a Dayton miracle from Holbrooke forgot that America's hard man had been able to call on massive Nato air strikes to cow recalcitrant Balkan negotiators into submission.

Nothing of the sort was ever likely to happen in Cyprus.

Instead, as the summer approached, the heat turned onto the government of President Clerides. At the heart of the problem lay the government's 1997 decision to order from Russia four batteries of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, initially due for deployment in August. The missiles would serve as a vital boost to the island's air defences, protecting the new Paphos air base and acting as a serious deterrent against any Turkish strikes. Each of the four batteries would have 12 missiles, with a range of 150 kilometres - therefore capable of shooting down planes as they took off from bases in mainland Turkey.

From the moment the order was placed two years ago, the government began setting conditions for its cancellation, making clear it was a tactical move to raise international interest in Cyprus and force Turkey to make concessions.

This policy was a gross miscalculation. In Ankara, politicians and generals queued up to threaten military action if ever the missiles were deployed in Cyprus.

Turkey would not play Clerides' game, making it an issue of principle to refuse any concession that might allow the government to back down with any modicum of dignity. Cyprus would either have to accept a humiliating capitulation or face air strikes that would wreck its defence and its economy.

The reply from Greece was bullish: it invoked the Joint Defence Dogma to warn that any Turkish attack against the missiles would constitute a casus belli. Matters were threatening to spiral out of control.

On June 16, Greek fighter jets flew in to the newly-opened Paphos airbase sparking an unprecedented rise in military tension. Turkish jets screamed into occupied Lefkoniko before the week was out, while a flotilla of warships docked in occupied ports. Rhetoric reached fever pitch and the presidents of the two rival motherlands, Costis Stephanopoulos and Suleiman Demirel, flew in for morale-boosting visits.

US envoy Thomas Miller warned things would get worse in Cyprus before they got better, and the Sunday Times reported that the Ministry of Defence in London was planning massive evacuation plans in case war broke out over the missiles, due for delivery at the peak of the summer tourist season.

International attention had turned to Cyprus, but not for the right reasons. The focus of diplomacy was on securing an urgent cancellation of the missile deal, not a solution of the Cyprus problem.

The Cyprus government agreed to one postponement of the missiles after another - from August to October, to November to the end of the year.

It was irrelevant. For the Turkish threat remained, and the international community - the Americans in particular - had one priority that overrode all other concerns: to avoid war on the southern flank of Nato. To that end, it was always going to be easier to pressure Cyprus than allied Turkey, especially when it appeared that Cyprus had provoked the crisis by stepping up the arms race.

Politicians in Cyprus began to realise that the missile policy was counter- productive: the Cyprus problem had become a missile problem. The world had forgotten about invasion and occupation to focus on military tension. And Denktash exploited that shift to its maximum potential.

This was the year when Denktash moved the goalposts, possibly for good. He was no longer willing to talk federation, he declared, only confederation between two sovereign states. Talks could only resume once the 'TRNC' had secured full international recognition.

Effectively, he would only be willing to discuss the details of partition. Let's be good neighbours, he suggested, sign a non-aggression pact, set up a register for the exchange of properties.

These were all radical suggestions, going against both the spirit and the letter of the UN Secretary-general's efforts to secure reunification in a bi-communal, bi-zonal federation. But they scarcely raised an eyebrow among an international community too busy worrying about the prospect of war in the eastern Mediterranean.

The tension also gave ammunition to those European states concerned about the wisdom of admitting a divided Cyprus into the Union. Would it really be wise to extend the borders of the EU into a potential war zone?

Diplomats began to suggest that the missiles were seriously damaging Cyprus' EU accession prospects, ruining the good economic work done to align Cyprus with the Maastricht criteria and the acquis communautaire. Last month, the governments of France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands issued an official communiqué saying the accession of a divided Cyprus would pose "fundamental problems" to the Union.

Greece managed to steer away the danger by threatening a veto of EU expansion if Cyprus' path was blocked; but alarm bells had begun to ring in Athens.

The government of Costas Simitis had staked everything on overcoming Greece's image as the bad boy of Europe, braving massive domestic opposition to steer Greece into Economic and Monetary Union by the year 2000. What he did not need was a bruising battle with his European partners over Cyprus and the prospect of a ruinous, open-ended military conflict with Turkey.

While the government in Cyprus continued to insist the missiles would come, the Athens press began to suggest otherwise, raising the possibility of a compromise deployment in Crete.

Sensing a climbdown might be imminent, the Americans last month dispatched Holbrooke's side-kick Thomas Miller to the region, while behind-the-scenes negotiations were under way in New York for Security Council resolutions that might offer crumbs of comfort to a Cyprus government apparently desperate for a way out.

Clerides went back and forth to Athens, convened the National Council on Christmas Eve, and yesterday finally admitted the inevitable - the missiles would go to Crete.

The brash victory celebrations of February 15 are a distant memory and the President's credibility is in tatters. His government has continually lowered the threshold for cancellation, from full demilitarisation, to the prospect of demilitarisation, to a no-fly zone - to cite but a few. Now a vague UN resolution about reducing tension and empty statements from President Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair seem to be enough.

Clerides' socialist coalition partners now look destined to quit the government, and calls for his resignation are being heard.

The missiles will never come, and a solution to the Cyprus problem seems further away than ever.

Far from direct talks on the substance of the national issue, the UN is back to square one, with a new round of shuttle talks, proximity talks, talks about talks with the aim of reducing immediate tensions.

At best, the year has been wasted; at worst it may end up as a landmark on the road to partition.

Wednesday, December 30, 1998

[05] There's been more to 1998 than missiles

THE MOST popular word for news headlines for 1998 was, without a doubt, "S- 300s", but it was not all Russian-made missiles and Cyprus problem out there.

The first two months of the year were dominated by the Presidential elections (which, admittedly, were in turn dominated by the S-300 issue).

A record seven candidates registered on January 10, but there was never any doubt who the two main contenders were. Incumbent Glafcos Clerides was, even as his 80th birthday approached, seeking re-election for a second five- year term with the support of right-wing Disy. In the opposite corner stood the pretender, former Foreign Minister George Iacovou, backed by a somewhat shaky alliance between left-wing Akel and centre-right Diko.

Diko had backed Clerides last time round, but their leader, Spyros Kyprianou, abandoned that winning pact with Disy claiming Clerides had broken a pre-election "promise" he made in 1993: that, come 1998, Disy would back Kyprianou for President.

Diko tried but failed to convince Attorney-general Alecos Markides to run as a "unifying" independent candidate and in the end decided to throw in their lot with Akel and Iacovou.

Kyprianou grabbed most of the headlines in the run-up to polling day on February 8. The ex-President unleashed a series of increasingly vitriolic and apparently bizarre attacks on Clerides.

Kyprianou alleged the US were "plotting" to get Clerides re-elected. He then claimed the intelligence services (Kyp) were also plotting to secure the incumbent's return. Next, Kyprianou said the Presidential palace was scheming to secure his political "annihilation".

The palace had even sunk as low as "buying" votes, the Diko leader alleged. Clerides's camp hit back by charging Kyprianou with turning nepotism into as "science" during his 10 years as President.

In election campaigning notable for mud-slinging rather than debate on issues, Clerides's main slogans were that he would bring the Russian S-300 missiles to Cyprus and deliver a Cyprus settlement.

His opponent put his foot in it by stating, during a live television interview, that he would not bring the S-300s if he were elected. Kyprianou reacted with horror, and Iacovou was forced to amend his statement the following day, saying he would bring the ground-to-air missiles earlier than Clerides if he was voted in.

The big day came and produced a virtual dead heat, forcing a second round of polling a week later, on February 15.

In the intervening week, Clerides managed to win the support of more of the defeated first round contenders and eventually won a narrow victory, beating Iacovou by just 6,657 votes.

March saw the EU giving the green light for the start of accession negotiations with Cyprus after the government tabled an invitation to the Turkish Cypriots to participate in the talks.

Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash promptly declared the UN-led settlement talks were "dead." UN envoy Diego Cordovez visited the island but failed to persuade Denktash to change his stance.

Father Christoforos, the chairman of one of the two committees for relatives of the missing, was forced to resign in disgrace after he publicised a Canadian Cypriot's bogus claims that 14 of the missing were "alive and living in a friendly neighbouring country."

On April 7, US envoy to Cyprus Richard Holbrooke arrived promising to "knock heads together" to kick-start the peace talks process. He failed, and left vowing his next visit would be his last if no progress was achieved.

Holbrooke re-appeared in early May, unveiled a new phone system linking the occupied and government-controlled areas and then left. He is yet to return.

On April 28, Denktash, in an exclusive interview with the Cyprus Mail, warned that "partition loomed."

Another major story to hit the headlines in April concerned homosexuality, and a long-postponed House vote on a bill decriminalising gay sex between consenting adults.

The Council of Europe (CoE) made it clear Cyprus would be in its bad books if it did not legalise gay sex, but Archbishop Chrysostomos warned that legalisation would mean Cyprus would "fill" with homosexuals.

George Vassiliou, head of Cyprus's EU negotiating team, warned deputies that a failure to approve the amendment could jeopardise the EU accession process.

Consideration of the bill, pending since 1996, was again postponed in April, but, on May 21, deputies finally bit the bullet, ignoring the protests of priests camped outside parliament and passing the controversial bill.

Spring also saw the arrest of two Aids carriers for having unprotected sex.

On April 27, Manchester-born Cypriot Chrysavghi Zarzour, 26, was sentenced to seven months imprisonment by a Nicosia court for having unprotected sex with two man. A month later, 28-year-old Larnaca waiter Andreas Michael was jailed for 12 months for having unprotected sex with two women. Six months later, Michael was handed an identical sentence after he pleaded guilty to charges of knowingly infecting his Swedish wife with the HIV virus.

Summer began on a sour note. On June 4 Larnaca Taxi driver Kyriacos Zanas, 36, was jailed for 20 years for the vicious murder of French tourist Françoise Chomik on Christmas Day 1997. The Larnaca court heard that Zanas had picked up the 49-year-old tourist from the airport and shot her on route to her Limassol hotel after an argument over the fare. He then put her body in the boot of his cab before going to a Christmas party in Larnaca. After the party he drove to Xylotimbou village, 10km from Larnaca, before dumping Chomik's body down a 100-foot dry well.

The month then turned "hot" on the Cyprus problem front with Greek F-16 fighter jets landing at the new Paphos air base and Turkey responding by sending war planes to the north in response two days later.

June 29 marked the beginning of the boat people saga when 106 immigrants were rescued, starving and thirsty, off a Syrian fishing boat found drifting off Cyprus.

The Arab and African immigrants, who all subsequently sought asylum, were housed in a three-star Limassol hotel to await their fate. Two months later, boat people clashed with police at the hotel amid rumours some of them were to be forcibly deported. Following the disturbances the Africans among the boat people were transferred to cramped police cells in Larnaca. Police are being investigated for their strong-arm tactics in quelling a later disturbance at the Larnaca holding cells.

Twenty-three of the boat-people have since been granted asylum and an another 15 deported, while the rest remain cooped up in the hotel and police cells six months after their sea rescue.

In October, another "death boat" full of immigrants ran aground on the Akrotiri coast, within the British bases. Almost all of the 75 mostly Iraqi immigrants in the boat are still being held by base authorities.

In July, UN envoy Diego Cordovez, the EU's Cyprus envoy, Sir David Hannay, and the US Cyprus co-ordinator, Thomas Miller, all visited, failed in their efforts to break the talks deadlock.

August was notable for its unbearable heat. A heat-wave in the first half of the month killed over 60, mostly elderly, people.

1998 was also the year when gangland violence reared its ugly head again after two years of relative peace.

On July 31, just six weeks after he and his two brothers were acquitted of the 1997 attempted murder of Larnaca gambling club owner Antonis Fanieros, Andros Aeroporos, 32, was gunned down outside a Limassol cabaret.

Police fears that the killing signalled the start of a new round of tit-for- tat violence between gangs vying for control of lucrative gambling and prostitution rackets were confirmed in early August, when Fanieros' son Loucas had a narrow escape when his car came under machine-gun fire in Larnaca.

There was another shooting attack and two bomb attacks that same month, leaving three gangland figures injured.

On September 16, unemployed bouncer Marios Panayides was shot dead at a Limassol petrol station. Exactly one month later, Aradipou councillor Andreas Xiourouppas survived being shot outside his home.

Then, on December 16, Andros's older brother, Hambis, was gunned down in broad daylight outside Limassol. Two policemen have been arrested in connection with Hambis's murder.

But if it has been a bad second half to the year for the police, then it has been a veritable annus horribilis for the Orthodox Church of Cyprus.

In June, the first of over 30 allegations of fraud against Bishop Chrysanthos of Limassol surfaced. The following month, the Bishop disappeared to Greece just as British detectives arrived on the island to question him over his alleged involvement in a $3.7 million scam to defraud British investors. Chrysanthos did eventually re-appear for questioning, denying the allegations outright.

As the Summer progressed, the number of financial scams allegedly involving the Bishop grew and grew.

Cyprus police launched an investigation, as did the Holy Synod. In October the Synod announced it had found Chrysostomos guilty of breaching ecclesiastical law. On November 23 the Bishop resigned after being presented with an eight-point indictment by the Synod. The Synod decided to suspend him for two years. The police investigation is ongoing.

In the meantime, the Church defrocked one priest and suspended another after they were photographed leaving a Paphos building which housed Romanian strippers.

The Church hardly had time to draw breath after the body blow dealt by the Chrysanthos scandal before the Bishop of Paphos launched into a sordid and extended attack on a Mount Athos elder. Chrysostomos saved no blushes in his pre-Christmas allegations against elder Iosif, saying the 80-year-old monk had "sexually molested" nuns and young girls during his stay at a Paphos monastery 17 years ago.

The Bishop also levelled undefined "immorality" allegations against a close associate of Iosif's, abbot Athanasios of Machairas monastery. Athanasios's supporters claim Chrysostomos' sole aim in making these lurid allegations is to undermine abbot Athanasios' candidacy for Limassol Bishop (to replace the disgraced Chrysanthos).

Archbishop Chrysostomos has tried to intervene to stem the tide of lurid allegations from his namesake, while elder Iosif's monastery has threatened to sue the Bishop.

It hasn't been a good year for Interior Minister Dinos Michaelides either.

Persistent and detailed corruption allegations levelled against him by Disy deputy and House Watchdog committee chairman Christos Pourgourides eventually led to President Clerides ordering the Auditor general, Spyros Christou, to investigate.

The investigation, ordered on September 19, led the cabinet, on the advice of Attorney-general Alecos Markides, to appoint two criminal investigators further to probe two of Pourgourides's 14 accusations against the minister. Never before had an acting minister been the subject of such an investigation.

The appointment of the criminal investigators on November 21 prompted Michaelides, who has always maintained his complete innocence, to tender his resignation. Clerides did not accept it.

A few days ago, Markides announced that Michaelides had been cleared by the criminal investigators.

It has also been a bad year for the Water development department (WDD) and Cyprus-Israel relations.

As if a grinding drought were not enough, the WDD has had to suffer the ignominy of it's director being brought to trial, convicted and jailed for abuse of his authority. Lakis Christodoulou was brought before a Nicosia court following a police investigation launched after a May 20 raid on the building site of his luxury home outside Nicosia uncovered WDD employees moonlighting for their boss.

In August, Agriculture Minister Costas Themistocleous took the unprecedented step of issuing a public apology for the sorry state the government had allowed water resources to get into.

With dams near-dry and no rain in sight, Themistocleous promised mobile desalination plants would be brought to the rescue. Red tape has stalled the arrival of the mobile plants. Meanwhile, every last drop is being sucked out of the ground in an effort to keep taps running.

Cyprus's relations with Israel, under strain over the Israel's military pact with Turkey, took a distinct turn for the worse on November 7 when two Israelis were arrested in Zygi village on suspicion of spying on National Guard positions.

Israel has made it plain it wants Udi Hargov, 37, and Igal Damary, 49, returned home, but Cyprus police have forged ahead with charging the two suspects. Israel has not even managed to get the two men released into the custody of the Israeli embassy in Nicosia till their trial.

Israel has not denied Hargov and Damary are Mossad agents.

On December 2, a tour guide discovered the mutilated dead bodies of two Chinese students dumped down a 300-foot ravine in the Troodos mountains. Police arrested two Chinese fellow-students of the victims' as suspects. Investigators say the motive for the vicious murder was robbery.

Wednesday, December 30, 1998

[06] US coast guard search for missing sailors from Cyprus ship

The engine room of the 175-metre Violetta, owned by Cyclamen marine Ltd of Cyprus, caught fire on Monday while the ship was at anchor over a kilometre offshore outside Houston, Texas. The cause of the blaze was unknown.

Although 23 of the crew safely fled the burning ship to rescue, the chief engineer and a third-class engineer - both engine-room personnel - remained missing, the Coast Guard said. A search was under way for the two crewmen.

The area around the burning vessel was cordoned off as the fire steadily engulfed the ship throughout Monday. Despite the crippled ship, the busy Houston Ship Channel remained open.

Firefighters doused the ship with water overnight to cool it and keep it from breaking apart and sinking, and then boarded it yesterday to try fully to extinguish the blaze, whose thick black smoke had clouded the Texas port.

Although empty, the Violetta carried about 625,000 litres of fuel oil, Coast Guard Lieut. Diane Hauser said.

As a precaution, Texas authorities dispatched oil-spill crews and protective environmental oil booms to contain any spill, although officials said any such a spill was unlikely.

The ship arrived in the Texas port on Christmas Day to pick up a cargo of wheat bound for El Salvador, one of a half-dozen Central American countries ravaged recently by Hurricane Mitch, which killed over 10,000 people and left millions homeless and hungry.

Wednesday, December 30, 1998

[07] Santa's Christmas burglary

The arrests of Grigoris Grigoriou, 30, and Andreas Theophiliou, 32, were made on Monday after a British resident of Tala told police he opened the door to an unknown Santa who rang his doorbell, and then ran away. Further investigations led to eyewitnesses who said an Isuzu Trooper driven by the two suspects had been seen in the area, with Theophilou dressed in a Santa suit.

The two are suspected of being involved in several break-ins over the Christmas period.

© Copyright Cyprus Mail 1998

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