Cyprus-Forum.com

[zan]

Cyprus Mail Article Giving the Details of the ECHR Decision and Torture of Erkan Egilmez (Named as Osman Egilmez Yousouf) by the Greek Cypriot police.

£10,000 for Turkish Cypriot beaten up by police
By Martin Hellicar Cyprus Mail 23 Dec. 2000.

THE GOVERNMENT yesterday said it would comply with a European Court of Human Rights ruling ordering it to pay some £10,000 in compensation to a Turkish Cypriot heroin smuggling suspect viciously beaten by police five years ago.

"The government respects the decisions of international bodies," Government Spokesman Michalis Papapetrou said. He promised the government would learn the lessons of the damning court ruling and "draw the necessary conclusions" for future action. "Of course there are weaknesses and problems and the government is fighting to solve these problems," Papapetrou said, pointing the finger at the police force. The court ruling, released late on Thursday, condemned Cyprus for "inhuman" treatment of Osman Eimez Yousouf, who was arrested after a drug squad sting operation in the buffer zone near Lymbia village on October 7, 1995.

"The Cyprus government admitted that, during and immediately after the arrest of the suspect, the police deliberately abused him," the court stated in its ruling. Yousouf, 34 at the time of his arrest, was unexpectedly released to return to the north on December 1 -- three days before he was due to stand trial on 11 drugs charges -- after he filed a complaint that he had been badly beaten by police.

Police insisted the suspect had been injured while resisting arrest. But his injuries were so severe that the Nicosia District Court had to convene in Larnaca hospital to remand him the day after his arrest. It later emerged that police wearing balaclavas had continued to beat Yousouf inside Larnaca hospital on the night of his arrest, ignoring nurses' protests. Nurses said officers used a sharp instrument to slash Yousouf on the ear, back and soles of his feat.

The Strasbourg court noted that nothing could excuse the treatment meted out to Yousouf: "Even under the most difficult conditions, such as in the battle against organised crime, the European Human Rights Convention completely bans torture and abuse of detainees." Cyprus was ordered to pay £10,400 Sterling in compensation to Yousouf, who comes from occupied Louroudjina village, not far from Lymbia in the Nicosia district, where he was arrested five years ago. At the time of Yousouf's release, the government denied it was trying to swap the Turkish Cypriot for two Greek Cypriots held in the north at the time. One of the Greek Cypriots, 19-year-old National Guardsman George Karotsakis, was set free by the Turks a few days after Yousouf's release. This is exactly the sort of exchange the relatives of Panicos Tsiakourmas, still being held by the Turks yesterday, are demanding that the government make, by releasing Turkish Cypriot drug suspect Omer Tekoglu from Larnaca police holding cells. The government has ruled out any such swap deal.

Coincidentally, Tekoglu and Yousouf were both arrested for allegedly trying to sell exactly the same quantity of heroin -- two kilos - to undercover drugs squad officers. Yousouf was also suspected of involvement in animal snuggling and of working for the Turkish secret services, MIT. The leader of main opposition party AKEL, Demetris Christofias, yesterday said the government had no choice but to comply with the Strasbourg court ruling.

"A government fighting for respect for the human rights of our whole people by condemning Turkey and taking her to human rights courts has no choice but to pay for wrong actions," he said. Cyprus has been pushing to get Ankara to comply with an earlier European Court of Human Rights decision ordering Turkey to pay massive compensation to Greek Cypriot Titina Loizidou for denying her access to her Kyrenia property because of the occupation. Christofias, like Papapetrou, said the police were at fault in the Yousouf case: "These are actions not of the government but of certain bodies which get out of line and cause these problems for the Cyprus Republic," the AKEL leader said.

[zan]

Twenty-six Turkish Cypriots, who crossed the border to South Cyprus with the hope of finding work and better economic conditions, were brutally beaten up by the Greek Cypriot police.
The Turkish Cypriot group, which were arrested in Limassol by the Greek Cypriot police crossed the border into the South Cyprus from the Famagusta region of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus on February 19.

After the original questioning, the 26 Turkish Cypriots, which had little children and women amongst them, were taken to a mountainous are and were brutally beaten up by the Greek Cypriot police.

After the brutal treatment, on the night of February 20, Turkish Cypriots were put on a coach and were taken to the UN controlled buffer zone near Zumrut Koy in north-western region of Cyprus.

Turkish Cypriots who crossed the border back into the TRNC were taken to a local hospital by the Turkish Cypriot police for treatment. Out of the group the two brothers, Ahmet and Aziz Topalogullari and a blind boy aged 12 were kept in hospital for observations due to their severe injures.

Ahmet Topalogullari had a broken rib and his brother Aziz Topalogullari was suffering from a broken nose and injuries to his head.

Talking to the journalist about their horrific treatment at the hands of the Greek Cypriot police members of the group said, "when we crossed the border we met a Greek Cypriot police officer named Kosti. He arranged for us to be taken to Limassol police station in Land Rovers. While we were there, he told us he received orders that we should be taken to another police station. They put us back into the Land Rovers but instead of taking us to another police station, we were taken to a mountainous area, where there were about 16 police officers wearing ski masks waiting for us."

Explaining how badly the Greek Cypriot police beat them up, they said "our tiny children were pushed into the mud, they pulled the hair of our wives and dragged them along the ground, pointing their guns on them they made them sing. They kept firing in the air and pointing their guns on us threatening to shoot us."

Saying that they narrowly escaped death at the hands of the Greek Cypriot police, they swore never to make the same mistake of believing that they could find a better life in South Cyprus and advised the young people, who have no jobs due to the bad economy caused by the ongoing embargoes on the TRNC, not to make the same mistake.

Although the Greek Cypriot regime denied all knowledge of the brutal incident, the Greek Cypriot police are well known for its treatment of the Turkish Cypriots. Few years ago a group of 22 Turkish Cypriots who declared that they wanted to live in South Cyprus were forced at gunpoint to go to the TRNC through a minefield.

Also the case of Erkan Egmez, the Turkish Cypriot who received compensation from the Greek Cypriot regime by the decision of the European Court of Human Rights for his horrific injuries at the hands of the Greek Cypriot police, is a further evidence to the brutality of the Greek Cypriot police towards the Turkish Cypriots. To see the evidence of the torture on Erkan Egmez visit the content page of our web site. (http://www.tcn-cy.freeuk.com/content.htm)

The irony of this horrific incident is that the Turkish Cypriots, who crossed to the South Cyprus, ethnically are not Turkish. They are gypsies whose ancestors settled in Cyprus long time ago. During the sixties and seventies, just like the Turkish Cypriots, they too were attacked by the Greek Cypriots. Because of the ill treatment they received at the hands of the Greek Cypriots, they always felt safer living with the Turkish Cypriots. Due to the economic problems many of these people emigrated to the UK and just like the group in the incident, some of them went to south Cyprus for a better economic life. We dread to think what would the Greek Cypriot police do if the group were ethnically Turkish Cypriots.


The actual guilty party for the horrific treatment of these people are the European politicians, who allows the continuation of the inhuman embargoes on the TRNC, creating economic difficulty for the Turkish Cypriots, causing them to seek better economic life in South Cyprus facing harsh treatment and torture at the hands of the brutal Greek Cypriot police.

[Tim Drayton]

This is where you have copied and pasted the second story above from:

http://www.tcn-cy.freeuk.com/brutal.htm

Any chance that you can put a date on this? I doubt it. It obviously isn't recent, because nowadays thousands of TCs cross from the north to the south without incident every day.

[zan]

This is where you have copied and pasted the second story above from:

http://www.tcn-cy.freeuk.com/brutal.htm

Any chance that you can put a date on this? I doubt it. It obviously isn't recent, because nowadays thousands of TCs cross from the north to the south without incident every day.

How recent do you want it to be Tim......1974? 1963?...It happened in our life time!!!

[Tim Drayton]

This is where you have copied and pasted the second story above from:

http://www.tcn-cy.freeuk.com/brutal.htm

Any chance that you can put a date on this? I doubt it. It obviously isn't recent, because nowadays thousands of TCs cross from the north to the south without incident every day.

How recent do you want it to be Tim......1974? 1963?...It happened in our life time!!!

It is a bit dishonest, don't you think, to post this as though it is recent news, when it obviuosly happened a long time ago? The reason that you cannot put a date on it is because you have blindly copied this unsubstantiated piece of news from a dubious site and pasted it here, without even bothering to check its veracity.

[zan]

This is where you have copied and pasted the second story above from:

http://www.tcn-cy.freeuk.com/brutal.htm

Any chance that you can put a date on this? I doubt it. It obviously isn't recent, because nowadays thousands of TCs cross from the north to the south without incident every day.

How recent do you want it to be Tim......1974? 1963?...It happened in our life time!!!

It is a bit dishonest, don't you think, to post this as though it is recent news, when it obviuosly happened a long time ago? The reason that you cannot put a date on it is because you have blindly copied this unsubstantiated piece of news from a dubious site and pasted it here, without even bothering to check its veracity.

There is a date on the first one and I have made no claims as to when all this happened........

[Get Real!]

What a loser…

[Tim Drayton]

I wonder if one of these people could be a certain Ahmet Hüseyin Topaloğulları who according to TRNC court transcripts:

http://www.mahkemeler.net/mahkeme-web-t ... D-7-96.dot

was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for, at 01.00 hours on 19.6.1995, digging up 5000 watermelons from somebody else's field and then selling these. Significantly, he was described as belonging to the group known as "travellers" (Gurbet olarak tanımlanan vatandaşlarımızdandır), and as having 15 siblings whose upkeep he was responsible for. Apparently, he had been committing offences of this nature from an early age, due to the family's strained economic circumstances.

I don't know if this has any bearing on the events that you have described, or may assist in putting a date on them.

[DT.]

you'll get used to Zan Tim...he used to get all his stuff from www.greekmurderers.net until he found out they kept making mistakes that were embarrassing him.

[Tim Drayton]

If you go to the home page of Zan's latest source:

http://www.tcn-cy.freeuk.com/

you will see that the story about 26 Turkish Cypriots being beaten up by the police is listed under the heading "NEWS FROM THE TRNC" as though this was up to date news. Of course, anybody with the slightest knowledge of the situation is Cyprus now would know from the details that this news story dates from many years ago. Those less aware of what life is like nowadays on the island might be fooled into believeing that this is breaking news (since they conveniently fail to give the year in which this alleged event occured).

I wonder which of the two above categories Zan falls into.