THREE OF the ten police officers involved in the vicious beating of two students were yesterday thrown off the force by majority decision of the Police Appeals Board, seven years after the incident.

In April 2011, three months after the officers involved escaped jail at the criminal court, they were fined a mere eight days wages each by the Police Disciplinary Committee. This decision was appealed by the assistant chief as hopelessly inadequate.

“The assistant chief appealed the sentence imposed on them as he considered it inadequate,” said police spokesman Andreas Angelides yesterday. It is practically unheard of for police to be kicked off the force in Cyprus.

According to Angelides the Appeals Board judged that the three officers who were forced to resign yesterday had held the “biggest share of the responsibility and participation” in the incident.

Also in the ruling, the Appeals Board said the disciplinary fines handed down to another four of the officers – eight days wages – was also inadequate, and ruled that it be extended to include two years without annual pay increments, which are automatic in the public service.

It judged that the original punishment in the case of the remaining three officers had been justified and that it should stand.

The beating incident dominated headlines in 2005 after a 43-minute amateur video recording, leaked to Politis newspaper, showed the two students being repeatedly beaten as they lay handcuffed on the ground, by five plainclothes officers, including four MMAD (Mobile Rapid Reaction Unit) officers and one female constable, after they were pulled over for a routine ID check on Armenia Street in Nicosia.

At the police officers’ original trial which ended in March 2009, the three-judge Nicosia Criminal Court acquitted the defendants, prompting a furious Attorney-general to file an immediate appeal.

The acquittal sparked widespread condemnation, with demonstrations outside the Nicosia courts. Outraged members of the public formed a protest group called Alert and held a series of noisy demonstrations where they placed bananas on the doorstep of the main criminal court building in Nicosia, in reference to a Banana Republic. They also held up banners that read “Disgrace” and “This country deserves better.”

At the appeal at the criminal court in 2011 eight of the officers involved were given suspended sentences. The eight, including the female police officer, received sentences ranging from two months to one year, depending on the degree of their involvement. The sentences were suspended for three years.

Seven of the defendants had pleaded guilty to assault and causing actual bodily harm and the policewoman to deliberately failing to stop her colleagues from carrying out the offences.

Cyprus Mail