Ex defence minister guilty of deaths in Cyprus explosion

Papacostas and the other three senior fire service officers, Andreas Nicolaou, Charalambos Charalambous and Andreas Loizides, could face long jail terms when they appear for sentencing on July 24. The three officers were found guilty only on counts of causing death by negligence.

“We have no doubt the defendant [Papacostas] was aware of the risks… but closed his eyes to the danger,” presiding Criminal Court Judge Tefkros Economou said in his verdict at a hearing attended by dozens of relatives clutching photos of the victims.

Former foreign minister, Markos Kyprianou, who served during the previous communist administration that had harboured the dangerous shipment of Iranian ammunition headed for Syria, was acquitted together with deputy military commander, Savvas Argyrou, while G. Georgiades, a senior defence ministry official had turned witness for the prosecution.

Relatives of the seamen and the firemen who were killed when the nearly 190 containers exploded on July 11, 2011, screamed “murderers” in front of the Larnaca District court as Kyprianou was found innocent. They said all six defendants should have been found guilty.

The previous government is widely blamed for the fiasco that decimated the nearby Vasiliko power station, sending the country and the economy into darkness, as the decision to store the containers that were confiscated from aboard a Russian cargo vessel was seen to be politically-driven.