From Cyprus-Weekly 

By Menelaos Hadjicostis

Successive governments were complicit in a sustained effort to conceal the fact that authorities had for decades known the identities of scores Greek Cypriot war dead officially listed as missing in action, court testimony suggested.

The testimony offered this week by Xenophon Kallis, adviser to the Greek Cypriot member of the tripartite Committee on Missing Persons (CMP), came during proceedings as part of a lawsuit filed against the state by the family of a man who had been listed as missing until 1999 when his remains were disinterred from a Nicosia-area cemetery.

Father-of-three Christofis Pashas, from Xylotymbou, was killed in heavy fighting with invading Turkish troops near Nicosia’s Ayios Dhometios race track in July, 1974.

He was buried in the Lakatamia military cemetery along with scores of other comrades who fell in battle and had been listed as missing in action for 25 years before being disinterred and given to his family for proper burial.

That happened when the administration of then President Glafcos Clerides broke with the “unofficial” policy of keeping the issue hushed and granted permission for exhumations to begin at Lakatamia cemetery.

Credence

Kallis’s testimony lends credence to long-held suspicions that officials had kept relatives in the dark about knowing the identity of possibly hundreds of Greek Cypriots killed during the 1974 Athens junta-backed coup and subsequent Turkish invasion.

Officials instead opted to list those fallen soldiers as missing in action ostensibly for political reasons.

For a quarter century, the official figure of people missing in action stood at 1,619, but identification of remains exhumed from the Lakatamia and Ayios Constantinos and Eleni cemeteries over the last few years reduced that number by several dozen.

“There was plenty of evidence in almost all cases (of individuals buried in Lakatamia cemetery) which, in combination with additional investigations would have led to the certain identification of the dead,” Kallis told the court.

Kallis submitted to the court a handwritten report by now-deceased policeman Demetrakis Papadopoulos who assisted in burying Greek Cypriot war dead.

The report states that personal effects found on the bodies, such as crosses and watches, could have helped in identifying the dead.

Moreover, the report notes how in some cases, identified individuals who were buried were nonetheless placed on the missing persons list.

Perhaps the most damning evidence of official complicity in what appears to be a deliberate cover-up was Kallis’s statement that he had received specific instructions from his political superiors not to give the CMP any evidence proving that at least some individuals listed as missing were, in fact, dead.

“The dead were buried in Greek Cypriot cemeteries and given the circumstances, we couldn’t ask for an investigation to trace the fate of these individuals,” said Kallis.

“…We would have furnished the Turkish side with the opportunity to bolster their propaganda that most people were killed during the coup.”

Kallis’s testimony also implicated the National Guard’s leadership in the cover-up. The official testified that the National Guard had files under lock and key since 1974 containing the personal effects of several of the dead who were buried in Lakatamia cemetery and later disinterred.

Kallis said the personal effects – most likely collected during the transfer of the dead soldiers from the battlefield to the hospital - were returned to their only two or three years ago.

Kallis said the bodies of dead soldiers were collected from battlefields following a secret, August 1974 agreement that he had only learned of 14 years ago following a newspaper article on the passing of a Greek Cypriot man who had helped bury 300 war dead in the aftermath of the invasion.

Exhumations

He said exhumations at Lakatamia cemetery began after the article ran in the now defunct Greek Cypriot daily “Agon”.

Kallis said had the state acted promptly, the agony of many relatives of the missing would have been alleviated long ago as in the case of Aggeliki Kyprianidou who took it upon herself to search for her missing husband Kypros Kyprianides.

Kyprianidou managed to locate his body in September, 1974 which she positively identified through the ID card she found in his clothing.

Yet Kyprianides was buried in Lakatamia cemetery and had remained on the official missing persons register until 1999.

“If efforts had been made just like that of Mrs. Kyprianidou, then many would not have been declared as missing but killed in action and the agony of their families would have been over,” said Kallis.

The lawyer for the Pashas family, Achilleas Demetriades, declined to comment on the specifics of the case, citing it’s still ongoing.

Challenge

But he said the case poses a serious challenge to the public and authorities alike on how to gather additional information on the whereabouts of people missing for decades.

Holding the key to unlocking the mystery of hundreds of people who vanished without a trace during the invasion are individuals who may have either been implicated in, or were witness to such abductions or killings.

It’s an aspect of the issue of the missing that has never been seriously addressed and Demetriades suggested Cypriot legislators should mull over such difficult options as voting a general amnesty to those implicated in killings to coax them into giving information.

Immunity from prosecution has been crucial to the success of such bodies as South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Cypriot legislators should view that as a possible model for emulation, said Demetriades.