Nikitas wrote:VW,
You are out of tune with events yet again. The two arrested, in case you have not heard, were father and son. Both were caught doing the same precise thing: photographing their home in a deserted town. If the TRNC was a serious entity it would have let both go with a warning or fined both. But there is that small detail of US citizenship and lack of cojones.
And had Cyprus kept the spy in jail what would have been the result, as things turned out? Let him go as part of the total swap deal which the Americans and the Russians worked out. Or should Cyprus have been the exception and tried him on its own for money laundering? In case you have not heard, the USA has unilaterally stopped all legal proceedings and dropped all charges against ALL the defendants in this case, ergo there would have been no case for him to answer in any court, since all charges emanated from the US charge sheet. It seems that Cyprus did the "right" thing, obviously not entirely on its own.
Exactly my point - TRNC is wary of involving a US national in what is essentially a Cypriot issue, hence the arrest only of the Cypriot in question.
The fact that the US might have agreed to drop charges in the US in return for a spy-swap, does not mean that they would have done the same for the Spy arrested in Cyprus. In any case it was for the US to decide whether to swap him, not for Cyprus to 2nd guess them. The fact that they bailed him BEFORE knowing what the US would do is the issue, not what happened in the event.