Cyprus-Forum.com

[pretty-as-pink]

A BRITISH woman is due in court today facing kidnap charges after she took her son to the UK. She has also been accused of hiring hitmen to murder her estranged Cypriot husband.

Sarah Antoniou, 38, has been held in Nicosia prison since November. She will appear in Paphos court this morning, although her mother, Patricia Norton and UKIP MEP Stuart Agnew, currently on the island, said the case will probably be postponed.

“I have spent a few hours with Sarah at the prison and she is a broken woman. I am on my way to deliver a letter to the President of the Republic of Cyprus to highlight the case. The allegations of attempted murder are very serious and she is being held on the most flimsy of evidence,” Agnew said yesterday.

Norton, who lives in the UK, will travel to Cyprus on Sunday to be with her daughter when the alleged attempted murder hearing gets underway at the Paphos court on Monday.

Sarah’s troubles began after she returned to the UK last year with her four-year-old son Alex, following the breakdown of her marriage to the child’s Cypriot father.

Norton said, “Sarah brought Alex back to the UK for treatment for a spine injury.”

Norton says that the Cypriot doctor attending him recommended treatment for Alex in the UK. The boy’s father refused permission for Sarah to take their son out of the country, and she asked a judge to remove him from the stop list.

“The judge refused to revoke the stop order, but Sarah decided to leave Cyprus anyway because she was very concerned for Alex’s health,” said her mother.

Agnew said, “This is where all of Sarah’s problems stem from. She crossed into the occupied areas and boarded a flight to Turkey, and from there she went onto the UK.”

Sarah returned to Cyprus with her son after attending a UK court assured her she wouldn’t face charges of abduction in Cyprus but she was arrested as soon as she disembarked her flight.

“For some reason everyone kept saying the court order was made in the UK and didn’t apply to Cyprus, but that isn’t so, its part of the Hague convention,” said Norton.

Believing that to be the end of the matter, Sarah continued with her life in Paphos with her husband visiting their child on a regular twice-weekly basis.

According to Norton, eight months later Sarah received a Cypriot court order saying she faced charges of kidnapping. The hearing was adjourned and the case is ongoing.

The real blow came on November 4 when police arrived at Sarah’s Paphos home and accused her of conspiring in the attempted murder of her husband.

Police then searched her home for evidence that she knew two Nigerian men who claim she paid them to murder her husband, and that she had access to, or had made payments of that sort of amount of cash.

According to the MEP, a Nigerian man turned himself into police, saying that he had been given €10,000 to murder a man who was the husband of a woman working in a Paphos café. He claimed that he and his accomplice, also from Nigeria, were due another €20,000 for the murder.

He also claims to have met his ‘client’ on many occasions and yet he first identified the wife of the café owner as the suspect. He then later claimed that Sarah was the wife wishing to kill her husband.

“I understand that Sarah is desperate and she believes she has been put in prison for something she didn’t do. She is frightened and alone and has no-one to talk to,” Agnew said.

He is due to meet the Attorney-general today to discuss the case.

More likely the father is trying to frame this poor woman to keep his son in the country.
Lock him up for making false allegations.

[CBBB]

Case postponed.

[pretty-as-pink]

Well what a surprise.

How are you old man?!!!