Cyprus Mail: News Articles in English, 03-04-11

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From: The Cyprus Mail at <http://www.cyprus-mail.com/>

Friday, April 11, 2003

CONTENTS

[01] Twenty to travel for Athens signing ceremony as President orders clampdown on overseas trips

[02] Police under fire again for “degrading” treatment of suspect

[03] Profiteering law 'could be impossible to enforce'

[04] Minister's brother named as interim CY head

[05] Matsakis: apology for crime cover-up is not enough

[06] Bird grounds Helios flight

[07] Journalists protest killing of colleagues in Iraq war

[08] Michaelides under spotlight again over land-zoning allegations

[01] Twenty to travel for Athens signing ceremony as President orders clampdown on overseas trips

Chrysostomides said that one representative from each of the political parties would be accompanying President Tassos Papadopoulos to Athens along with the Attorney-general and other officials. Former president Glafcos Clerides and former EU negotiator for Cyprus and president George Vassiliou will also be among the party. “The numbers for each delegation has been fixed by the Presidency of the EU,” Chrysostomides said, adding that members of he delegation would be performing various different functions during the Athens visit.

The government spokesman also commented on a suggestion by New Horizons leader Nicos Koutsou that Turkish Cypriot representatives also be invited to participate in the Cypriot delegation as a gesture of good will.

“This was discussed at the National Council but it was decided that under the circumstances it would just be a theatrical move and counter-productive, ” he said.

As the 20-strong delegation prepares for Athens, Papadopoulos told Cabinet members on Thursday that he was ordering a clampdown on trips abroad by his ministers. Reports yesterday said he was cutting trips down by 70-80 per cent.

According to the reports, Papadopoulos said that only essential overseas travel would be approved by him and that the permanent secretaries of the ministries would not be allowed to go abroad at the same time as the ministers. Other government officials who want to go abroad on official business must also have their trips approved by their respective ministers, who will in turn be answerable to the President.

“The action is to decide on what trips are absolutely necessary,” Chrysostomides said.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2003

Friday, April 11, 2003

[02] Police under fire again for “degrading” treatment of suspect

The mistreatment of suspects in police holding cells came to light after a pilot serving on the British bases filed a complaint with the ombudsman's office last November, said Aristos Chartas, an officer at the department.

Limassol police arrested Wesley Daniel Terence Carlile last June for driving under the influence of alcohol. He was placed into custody at 3.30am and was only released at 10.30pm. Carlile admitted he was over the legal alcohol limit and did not resist arrest, said Chartas. Yet during his arrest, police forced him to clean the holding cells' courtyard - something they said was common practice for all detainees.

“We believe this is not right. It is humiliating and degrading. People are held for up to 24 hours so that the police can carry out their investigations, not to have the suspects clean other cells and the courtyard,” he said. “They are only being held temporarily, they are not in jail. If they were in jail it would be a different story and they could be made to clean up.”

The mistreatment did not stop there. Carlile was also forbidden to contact his wife or commanding officer, said Chartas.

“His wife was worried and he had a duty to contact his superiors. This is a military man and the unit wanted to know where he was. Police said they called his unit, but they took a long time in doing so and only did so after he had already been missing for hours.”

Furthermore, police arrested Carlile and did not release him for 20 hours. According to Chartas, this was an excessive and unnecessarily long period of time.

“The constitution allows for citizens to be held in police custody without a warrant for a period of up to 24 hours. Nevertheless, this does not mean that citizens should be held for that long. Instead, police are supposed to work as fast as possible in order to release the detainees as soon a possible,” he said. “In this case, the man admitted he was drunk, did not resist arrest and all they had to do was wait for him to sober up. That should have taken only four to five hours in a holding cell, not 20. It was as if they were trying to punish him, which is not their job. Their job is only to investigate.”

Carlile was fined in court for breaking the law, Chartas pointed out. “He admitted his mistake and was punished. We are not saying the police were wrong to arrest and charge him, we are saying their treatment of him was wrong.”

This is the second time Limassol police has come under fire this week. On Monday, a married Russian woman alleged she had been physically assaulted by plain-clothes officers when who arrested her in January. Gourjanad Chikhaev denies any wrongdoing and is now waiting to stand trial on five charges.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2003

Friday, April 11, 2003

[03] Profiteering law 'could be impossible to enforce'

The bill foresees that any retail outlet caught selling products at excessive prices will face fines of up to £2,000 or two years in jail.

Speaking to the Cyprus Mail yesterday, Competition and Consumer Protection director, Leontios Pericleous said:

“(House Commerce Committee chairman) Lefteris Christoforou has raised the issue of criminalizing profiteering,” he said.

“But the issue is how do we determine what is profiteering and what is not? But that is another story, in theory it could work but in practice we would face difficulties.

“The bill states that the product should be sold at a logical price, but what is a logical price? If a product costs me £10 and I sell it for £500, is that profiteering? And if I sell it for £400 it's not? Whose logic are we basing this bill on,” he added.

Pericleous said that before harmonisation with the European Union, the government had set prices based on the Supplies and Services law on wholesale and retail consumer products.

“We had to abandon the price control because no EU country implements price control,” he said.

“On our part, we will do whatever we can in this direction, as long as we are given specific criteria based on the legislation, so we can do our job.”

But Christoforou was yesterday adamant that if passed the bill would prevent profiteering.

“When the selling price is disproportionate to the cost price, for example double or triple the cost price, it's quite obvious there is profiteering involved,” he said.

“We have been fighting for ages to solve the problem of profiteering and so far the government was completely resigned to the issue.”

Christoforou said he new bill would make people aware that there was someone in control and that it would prevent retailers from attempting to sell at higher prices.

“We want to clamp down on profiteering, we want those people to know that everything is controlled and that they can't just do whatever they like,” he said. “We want this bill to be a catalyst against profiteering.”

Christoforou blasted then Commerce Minister Nicos Rolandis' comments to the committee that pricing high was part of being in a free market.

“He told us it's a free market and any one could sell at whatever price he wanted and if consumers were finding the prices too expensive they could change supermarkets,” he said.

“But we can't have this, do we have to portray this image to tourists coming to the island? What would a tourist say when he goes back home, when he discovers that a sign outside a kiosk priced ice cream in English at £1 and in Greek 50 cents.”

Christoforou said the committee had so far received no evidence to support that profiteering should not be criminalised.

“The new Commerce Minister, George Lillikas, said he was going to clamp down on profiteering with laws,” he said.

“We have basically paved the way for him to do so, we have taken the first step and now it's up to him.

“We want a liberalised economy, but not an economy of theft. Greece and the EU have measures to prevent profiteering, so why can't we? We want to protect consumer rights.”

The bill is expected to be brought before the plenum next Thursday.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2003

Friday, April 11, 2003

[04] Minister's brother named as interim CY head

CYPRUS Airways (CY) vice-chairman Achilleas Kyprianou has been appointed as acting chairman of the board until the government decides on a replacement for Haris Loizides.

Kyprianou, brother of Finance Minister Marcos Kyprianou and son of the late DIKO leader Spyros Kyprianou, has been a long-serving member of the CY board.

Following the resignation of DISY-appointed chairman Loizides earlier this week, the Cabinet decided that Kyprianou should take over the board until a new chairman was appointed. The procedure may take around two weeks.

In his resignation letter, Loizides said he was stepping down because the government needed to appoint a chairman that would have its full support, implying the new government did not have faith in him. This has been denied by the government, which said Loizides could continue as chairman but that the CY board would have to inform the Finance Ministry of all major decisions.

During his two years as chairman, Loizides has repeatedly been dragged before parliamentary committees to answer allegations of mismanagement.

Just two weeks ago, CY management was grilled by members of the House Watchdog Committee over the sale of four Airbus A310-200 aircraft, which deputies said were not sold at the best possible price.

Press reports also carried stories about how board members were allowed to tender for CY contracts for goods and services while staff members were not.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2003

Friday, April 11, 2003

[05] Matsakis: apology for crime cover-up is not enough

The demand followed the admission in January by Chief of Police Tassos Panayiotou that crime rate figures had in the past been manipulated to look better and allegations by AKEL deputy Kikis Yiangou that over 90 per cent of serious unsolved crimes were not recorded, investigated or included in the preparation of crime statistics.

Speaking to the Cyprus Mail yesterday, Matsakis said the manipulation of figures had been brought to light in a recent discussion at the House Crime Committee.

“For a number of years, the figures given were grossly underestimated so the percentage of success would be exaggerated. They (the police) were not reporting the true number of crimes - they were recording a half or a third of these.”

Matsakis stressed that the apologies given by Panayiotou and the new Justice Minister Doros Theodorou for the inaccurate figures were inadequate.

“In my opinion an apology is not enough. We need to look into the matter more closely. And I feel that those people responsible should face the consequences.

“What sort of message are we sending our citizens otherwise? If our police are acting outside the law why should our citizens act within it?”

Matsakis added that he hoped the issue would be dealt with soon.

“If it is not properly dealt with there is nothing to stop this happening again,” he warned.

Meanwhile Panayiotou reassured that since new methods of recording crime had been introduced, the percentage of solved crimes 'detected' had been slashed by half, from 80 to 40 per cent.

“The figure is around 40 per cent today and this is seen as a very satisfactory average figure in Europe,” he said.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2003

Friday, April 11, 2003

[06] Bird grounds Helios flight

A DAMAGED Helios Boeing 737 carrying 180 passengers landed safely at Stansted Airport yesterday following an incident involving a bird strike, which damaged the aircraft's tail.

The flight took off from Luton Airport at 11.40am yesterday and was due to arrive at Cyprus at 6pm, Helios senior manager Andreas Christodoulides told the Cyprus Mail from London.

“The tail sustained minor damage after take-off and the pilot had to decide whether to return to Luton for safety reasons or go on to land at Stansted, ” Christodoulides said.

He said the pilot chose the latter because Helios has a maintenance agreement with a company there. He also said the pilot circled Stansted to burn off fuel, a standard safety procedure in case of an emergency landing.

A Luton airport spokesman said: “The aircraft experienced technical difficulties” and was heading for Stansted. There, an official confirmed that the pilot was burning off fuel by circling the airport.

Christodoulides said the plane landed safely at Stansted at around 2pm and was being repaired. Another of the company's Boeing 737s was sent from Cyprus to Stansted to bring the passengers back to the island, he said.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2003

Friday, April 11, 2003

[07] Journalists protest killing of colleagues in Iraq war

AROUND 50 Cypriot journalists yesterday marched on the American embassy to protest against the deaths of 12 colleagues killed in the war in Iraq.

The issue came to a head on Tuesday when two cameramen, one working for Reuters and the other for a Spanish network, and an Al-Jazeera journalist were killed in separate attacks by American troops. Four others belonging to the Reuters team were injured.

Foreign media staying at Baghdad's Palestine Hotel all denied US claims that shots had first been fired at the Americans from the hotel. Statements from the US varied as to where the shots allegedly came from, ranging from the hotel lobby to a sniper shooting across the river at the American tank. The Reuters reporters were on the 15th floor balcony, which was hit by a single tank shell.

The Independent's Robert Fisk reported he was driving on a road between the tanks and the hotel at the moment the shell was fired “and heard no shooting”. He said an American General had “clearly suggested” that the Reuters camera crew was in some way involved in shooting at Americans.

The Al-Jazeera journalist was killed earlier on Tuesday when the station's Baghdad office was hit in a residential neighbourhood. They had earlier informed US command of their coordinates to avoid just an incident.

Yesterday's march was led by Cyprus Union of Journalists chief Andreas Kannaouros and protesters carried banners saying 'No to killing journalists and information' and 'No to war. Yes to peace and human rights'.

In a written statement handed to an official from the American embassy, Kannaouros said what had happened in Baghdad was a “serious war crime against the freedom of the press and the right to information”. During the demonstration, the Cypriot journalists lit candles for their dead colleagues.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2003

Friday, April 11, 2003

[08] Michaelides under spotlight again over land-zoning allegations

The alleged scam centered around a large area of land in the Trimithousa region of Paphos, the value of which increased six-fold in 1996 when changes to town planning zones suddenly placed the land in a tourist zone.

Reports suggest that George Charalambides, former Permanent Secretary to Michaelides, acted on his superior's behalf to push for the change to the land zones, benefiting a Greek Cypriot landowner living in London, who saw the value of his land go from £2,500 to £12,500 per 1000 square metres overnight.

“It's a great scandal,” Pourgourides told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.

“The late Mr Charalambides wrote a short paragraph alleging that the District Officer of Paphos was proposing the change but the District Officer denied this. As a result of this statement by Mr Charalambides there was a significant increase in value to the land.”

Pourgourides stressed that there was substantial evidence to support the case.

“Rarely do scandals of this nature become so established and well documented. It's a clear case of a fraudulent act.

“Bearing in mind that there are statements from other members of the Town Planning Board to the effect that the Minister was pressing them to make the change (it is clear) the two men (Charalambides and Michaelides) were conspiring.”

The Chairman also called on Michaelides to explain his position before the Committee.

“When there are allegations in statements made before the House that he

(Michaelides) was exerting undue influence on people to agree to changing the zone, I believe he is under an obligation to explain what happened, either to deny it or to give an explanation.”

Director of Town Planning Yiannos Papadopoulos yesterday hinted that similar allegations regarding Interior Ministry members had surfaced before. “Rumours involving the Ministry have circulated in the past,” he admitted.

Papadopoulos also said the Watchdog Committee had already begun drafting a report on the case to be put before the House of Representatives but stressed that the Attorney-general's office should also look into the issue.

“I believe that the Attorney-general's office must look into the matter to see if there is a criminal offence. It's a very serious matter.”

He added that a study of the case, completed a year ago, had been sent to the Legal Services.

“I hope the whole business will be completed at the next meeting of the Committee,” he said.

Michaelides yesterday declined to comment on the allegations.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2003

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