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[sadik]

As you know Matsakis was arrested at Ledra Palace check point a few days ago due to the prior incident near Lourigina. He was trying to take chocholates and cake to Talat as a gesture of good will.

His methods might be unconventional but he sure is not boring. Considering where 50 years of "sanity" have taken us, do you think it would be better or worse with more Matsakis kind of insanity in Cypriot politics?

I'm thinking something like Talat painting his face in black, jumping over the fences of the presidential palace, throwing drugged meat to the dogs, climbing to the walls of the palace, entering into Papadopoulos' Square Office and trying to reach to a comprehensive settlement with P. by the time the Presidential Guard throw him out.

[Kifeas]

As you know Matsakis was arrested at Ledra Palace check point a few days ago due to the prior incident near Lourigina. He was trying to take chocholates and cake to Talat as a gesture of good will.

His methods might be unconventional but he sure is not boring. Considering where 50 years of "sanity" have taken us, do you think it would be better or worse with more Matsakis kind of insanity in Cypriot politics?

I'm thinking something like Talat painting his face in black, jumping over the fences of the presidential palace, throwing drugged meat to the dogs, climbing to the walls of the palace, entering into Papadopoulos' Square Office and trying to reach to a comprehensive settlement with P. by the time the Presidential Guard throw him out.

Matsakis might be many things, but there is one thing he definitely isn't, and this is the fact that he is not a conformist like unfortunately all the rest of us. For this and only this he has my outmost respect. If it is a crime to take off the flag of the occupier of one's country, then let them put him in jail. At the end of the day, I am sure Matsakis will emerge victorious from this issue, at least morally.

Talat could easily meet with Papadopoullos if he really wants, without having to do any of the somewhat “degrading” things that Sadik has mentioned above.

[Svetlana]

I appreciate no-one is guilty until so proven - but do we want to nominate a person who is under investigation for Police bribary as well as smuggling artifacts from the North, as a national hero?

Perhaps the Government will seek to extradite him from the North - or maybe the they will prefer him to stay there LOL!

Lana

[zan]

I appreciate no-one is guilty until so proven - but do we want to nominate a person who is under investigation for Police bribary as well as smuggling artifacts from the North, as a national hero?

Perhaps the Government will seek to extradite him from the North - or maybe the they will prefer him to stay there LOL!

Lana

He is a criminal on the run from the RoC. He probably thinks that the flag incident is a lesser crime and once he is released by the TRNC he will do a runner?

[Piratis]

What we want is not craziness. What we need are people with humanistic values on both sides.

About matsakis I am not 100% sure. I agree with most things that he does, but I am not convinced that he doesn't do them for publicity.

[Alexios]

If he didnt, he woulnt make sure that wherever he appears to do something, he makes sure all the channels are there....

[Kifeas]

I appreciate no-one is guilty until so proven - but do we want to nominate a person who is under investigation for Police bribary as well as smuggling artifacts from the North, as a national hero?

Perhaps the Government will seek to extradite him from the North - or maybe the they will prefer him to stay there LOL!

Lana

He is a criminal on the run from the RoC. He probably thinks that the flag incident is a lesser crime and once he is released by the TRNC he will do a runner?

Since according to you he is a criminal, why you didn’t come over to join the rest of your “grey wolf” buddies in their efforts to lynch him outside the occupational military “court” this afternoon?

By the way, he is not on the run from the RoC! He had actually entered the occupied areas from the regular entry check point in Ledra palace, thus he had passed in front of many RoC policemen before reaching it.

[zan]

His crime in the TRNC was what he has been arrested for. His crimes in the RoC is what he is running away from. That is up to the RoC as to what they want to do with him when and if he returns. If he did go past several RoC policemen on his way through, it seems to me that the RoC is very lax in allowing its people to leave its boarders when those people have court cases pending against them???? Perhaps it is just their way of getting rid of an embarrassment.

[Kifeas]

I appreciate no-one is guilty until so proven - but do we want to nominate a person who is under investigation for Police bribary as well as smuggling artifacts from the North, as a national hero?

Perhaps the Government will seek to extradite him from the North - or maybe the they will prefer him to stay there LOL!

Lana

Svetlana, in Greek we have the saying “drios pesousis pas anir ksileuete,” which translates roughly as follows: “Once a tree has fallen, everyone acts like a woodcutter.” It is easy when someone has fallen down, each one of us to pass by and kick his ass and belly, forgetting who he previously was and what his overall contribution to the country is. Let’s don’t follow this path!

Matsakis had managed to force the ending of the British military exercises in Akamas forest, by visibly entering the exercise field and hiding into it for more than two days, without them being able to find him. This incident, along with general public pressure, meant the final ending of the destruction of the akamas peninsula by the British military, so that now we can freely enjoy the Akamas nature without the risk of stepping onto some unexploded and forgotten shell or mine.

Matsakis had entered the British bases in Akrotiri and climbed up the British spy antenna in protest, and the publicity that this incident received, together with the other demonstrations and riots of the public, had compelled the British to make second thoughts about its operation and to agree to invite international experts to measure its electromagnetic harmfulness to the people of Limassol and to the ecosystem of the area. The case of the antenna operation is still pending if I am not mistaken.

Matsakis, although being employed by the state as a public forensic doctor /coroner, had chosen to put his career at stake by publicly and systematically confronting with the government and the political elites, for their neglect in the field of medical care, accident prevention and technological means inadequacy in the field of post-mortar examinations, thus forcing them (upon public pressure) to take measures and action towards modernising some of these areas.

Yes, he has his shortcomings and his weaknesses as an individual and clearly his later behaviour, in relation to the policeman’s case and the antiques from the occupied areas, are both illegal in the letter of the law sence. However, we need to have a look at the conditions under which he acted. The case of the policeman in which he was accused of bribery, is not as tragic as people like to make it look and sound. The policeman was serving in the anti-drug trafficking department of the police and he engaged in an incident in which in his effort to arrest him, he acted negligently and shot and killed a drug dealer, while he was chasing him. The policeman was at fault, and Matsakis being hired by the family of the drug dealer as an independent forensic had somehow proved it in his post-mortal examination. The policeman had secretly approached Matsakis and asked for his help in the court so that he doesn’t lose his job and end up in jail. As the policeman alleges, Matsakis somehow told him that he was willing to f**k the case in the court and help him to save his ass, since the other guy was a drug dealer anyway, but that he needed some monetary “compensation” (10,000 pounds) to do it. The policeman said that he needed some days to collect the money, presumably by getting some contribution from his colleges, but then they all decided to trap Matsakis instead, by secretly taping his conversation with him so that they claim in the court that as a forensic witness on the side of the “victim” he was an untrustworthy one, due to the fact that he was willing to change his initial findings for money. This is more or less the case of the policeman and the bribery.

As for the case of the antiques and the so-called smuggling from the north, again we are talking about artefacts and antiques from GC houses that the smugglers in the north choose anyway to sell abroad to private collectors and thus those items are lost forever for Cyprus, as part of our traditional heritage. What Matsakis had being doing was to buy them instead, and store them inside and outside his house, in everyone’s open view (he was not hiding them,) with the intention to open a private specialty museum in the future. What he was doing was from one aspect illegal, but from another aspect it was a desperate act to protect with his own money the Cypriot cultural heritage, something which the department of antiquities was failing to do and thus since 1974, many of those items were either getting destroyed in the north or getting sold outside Cyprus and thus lost for ever. Matsakis had informed many times the department of antiquities of the fact that there were smugglers in the north who were trying to illegally sell those things abroad, and the department of antiquities did not deem them as items of high historical value, besides their standard ostrich claim that it was a matter of “moral” policy not to buy with our money our own artefacts from the occupied north, and thus encourage the smugglers to engage in this act (as if they needed the encouragement of our side to do what they were already doing anyway.) The department of antiquities knew that Matsakis was buying those things for many years now, but they decided to turn a blind eye to this activity, and for this reason Matsakis had kept them “freely” outside his front and back yard (the big jars) and inside his house the wooden chests.

Now, because the police couldn’t catch his leg on the issue of the policeman because they also used illegal methods and means by taping his conversations and phone calls; acting out of vengeance for his “crime” to ask money in order to help their colleague who was in trouble (instead of doing it freely as they would have expected,) they decided to hit him on the issue of the jars and the chests, even though the department of antiquities knew about and refused to take action in protecting them as it was their duty to have done so.

[Kifeas]

double post