Former Chief of Staff of National Guard Constantinos Bisbikas on Friday appeared before the single-member commission of inquiry that investigates the circumstances that have led to last month’s massive explosion of munitions, which killed 13 people and destroyed the island’s main power station.

Bisbikas who served in the Cyprus army between January 2006 to April 2009, expressed the view that the containers full of munitions, which were confiscated from “Monchegorsk”, a vessel sailing from Iran to Syria in 2009, “should not have been unloaded on Cyprus soil”, adding that “should I have been asked on the matter, I would have expressed my disagreement”.

Lieutenant General Bisbikas who was on leave between February 6 -18, 2009 when decision was made for the containers to be stored in Cyprus, said that at no point during this period was he briefed that there was such an intention and that he only found out about that the munitions were stored at the naval base on the 13th.

He also said that he was told that the munitions were to be stored at the naval base only temporarily, stressing out that “should I have known that the cargo was to stay there for a period of more than 2-3 months, I would have taken other measures of precaution”.

Cyprus’ Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Minas Chatzimichael also testified before the commission on Friday, explaining his involvement regarding the contacts he had with the UN Security Council Sanctions Committees about the confiscated cargo.

He said that on February 3rd , 2011 the Republic of Cyprus had informed the Sanctions Committees that “we don`t have the capabilities and the facilities for storing the cargo, whereas on February 12th, the Committee was informed that “we have managed to overcome the difficulties for safes storage”.

Chatzimichael said that he had then expressed his “surprise because of the different content of the two letters”, however he said that from his understanding, “the decision for the storage of the cargo was made on a higher level” and the lette was most probably approved by the Presidential Palace and by the Law office of the Cyprus Republic.