Cyprus-Forum.com

[YFred]

Time to bring justice up to scratch
By Stefanos Evripidou

IT IS time for the courts to abandon the formalistic procedures adopted in a bygone era and move into the European era of human rights and justice, said Chairman of the House Legal Committee Ionas Nicolaou yesterday.

Commenting on the criminal court’s decision to acquit ten police officers charged with beating two young students in an incident three years ago, Nicolaou said parliament would examine the courts’ application of the law on evidence to see if it fitted with the aims of the law.

“The courts should abandon the formalistic procedures set up under another mindset and in a system applicable in Cyprus before 2004 and start dealing with the substance of a case so that justice is served at the level we all expect,” said the DISY deputy.

The criminal court acquitted the ten officers using the main argument that the video evidence submitted of the beating was not reliable. The fact that the person who took the video remained anonymous and did not testify out of fear of police reprisals played a big part in the court’s judgement.

According to yesterday’s Phileleftheros, a Romanian video expert who testified in court on the video’s authenticity, said it would take someone two years, working 24 hours a day non-stop to doctor every frame of a 43-minute video.

“It takes two years continuous work and I’d like to stress that, without someone sleeping, drinking or eating. Twenty-four hours a day of continuous work,” Dr Catalin Grigoras told the court. The expert ruled out the possibility of the video being a fake.

The video was aired by every news channel and is available on the Politis website, which was the first to show the video of the beating that occurred in 2005 in Nicosia.

The shocking footage of police kicking, beating and standing on two handcuffed students had shocked Cyprus into widespread condemnation. The ten acquitted of the charges were initially identified by their superiors following public outrage at the incident.

During the trial, former police chief Charalambos Koulentis spoke of the initial effort by police to cover up the case and turn the victims into aggressors.

After being beaten up and suffering serious injuries, the two students were initially accused by police of assault. On December 20, 2005, police effectively accused the students of being deranged by trying to attack police while falling all over the place and hurting themselves.

The charges against the students were only dropped when the media made the video public. The police then released a statement apologising for its earlier announcement and set about trying to break the ranks of the force to identify those responsible and begin a criminal investigation.

However, three years later, the video was deemed unreliable by the criminal court, as was the testimony of the victims who identified the officers in the video, leading to a complete acquittal of all ten officers. The ten will now likely return to their posts in the force, following the acquittal, the police leadership has said.

Nicolaou yesterday said the Legal Committee would examine the application of the law of evidence and compare it to the court’s decision, which dealt for the first time with video evidence submitted by someone other than the video maker.

“This is the first time the court dealt with this provision and the Committee has decided to examine the application of this legislation, introduced in 2004 within the framework of modernisation of the law of evidence.”

The committee wants to see the law applied in the way it was intended by lawmakers, “and not by other criteria or factors, which go beyond the law”, he said.

Nicolaou stressed that five years after the island’s EU accession, it was time for Cyprus to start thinking in European terms of justice, where the spirit, and not the letter, of the law was followed.

The committee head noted a recommendation by the European Court of Human Rights for national courts to abandon the formalistic approach and to examine the substance of cases.

Government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou acknowledged the sense of injustice felt, noting that proposals for changes to the legal system would be studied in the future.

“At the same time we shouldn’t break up the system, or stop having trust in the institutions,” he added.

Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2009

At last. Somebody has seen that there is something wrong with the Justice System of the "RoC"

[Get Real!]

Civil court cases are IRRELEVANT to the Cyprus Problem so stop littering this forum section you fool!

[YFred]

Civil court cases are IRRELEVANT to the Cyprus Problem so stop littering this forum section you fool!

Is that all you can come up with you poor sod. Lets see the reaction of the EU next week first and will talk more.

[Get Real!]

Civil court cases are IRRELEVANT to the Cyprus Problem so stop littering this forum section you fool!

Is that all you can come up with you poor sod. Lets see the reaction of the EU next week first and will talk more.

Post this kind of stuff in general section.

[YFred]

Civil court cases are IRRELEVANT to the Cyprus Problem so stop littering this forum section you fool!

Is that all you can come up with you poor sod. Lets see the reaction of the EU next week first and will talk more.

Post this kind of stuff in general section.

You don't get it GR. Without faith in the RoC justice system by the TCs, how will you solve the Cyprus Problem. If you can have the kind of crap you and KP put in here, surely my psts ar a little bit more serious.

[Get Real!]

Civil court cases are IRRELEVANT to the Cyprus Problem so stop littering this forum section you fool!

Is that all you can come up with you poor sod. Lets see the reaction of the EU next week first and will talk more.

Post this kind of stuff in general section.

You don't get it GR. Without faith in the RoC justice system by the TCs, how will you solve the Cyprus Problem. If you can have the kind of crap you and KP put in here, surely my psts ar a little bit more serious.

You think a bunch of washed out Anatolian goofballs are smart enough to fool the Greek Cypriots that its all about having faith in the RoC? Have you ever asked yourselves if anyone has any faith in treasonous crap like you lot?

[YFred]

Civil court cases are IRRELEVANT to the Cyprus Problem so stop littering this forum section you fool!

Is that all you can come up with you poor sod. Lets see the reaction of the EU next week first and will talk more.

Post this kind of stuff in general section.

You don't get it GR. Without faith in the RoC justice system by the TCs, how will you solve the Cyprus Problem. If you can have the kind of crap you and KP put in here, surely my psts ar a little bit more serious.

You think a bunch of washed out Anatolian goofballs are smart enough to fool the Greek Cypriots that its all about having faith in the RoC? Have you ever asked yourselves if anyone has any faith in treasonous crap like you lot?

Only in a fascist state criticism of a government is seen as Treason, and the punishment is fair trial, followed by the death penalty. Is the RoC a fascist state dear boy?