A 33-year-old Cypriot man who stole a box containing a Swedish teenager’s ashes from his family’s rented car was jailed for 15 months by the Limassol district court.
The thief who expressed remorse in court, and to the teenager’s family, was handed a 10-month jail sentence for stealing property with another five months added to his sentence from a previous suspended conviction.
He had previously received an eight-month suspended sentence for thefts in the past, which has now been activated due to his reoffending. Following this conviction, he will now serve a total of 15 months in prison.
His 35-year-old girlfriend, believed to have aided him, was acquitted of charges relating to theft and malicious damage.
The stolen urn was eventually returned to the teenager’s family on New Year’s Day after a repentant 33-year-old had told the mother where to find it.
The parents of 19-year-old Swede Dennis Bednarz were finally able to scatter their son’s stolen ashes in Cyprus on New Year’s Day.
His parents scattered their son’s ashes in the sea off the coast of Zygi near Limassol after returning from Sweden for a second time.
Kinga and Bartek Bednarz, originally from Poland, but living in Sweden the past 12 years, had their son’s ashes stolen from their car parked outside a restaurant in Governor’s Beach on December 27.
His remains were enclosed in a wooden box inside a black backpack. The car was raided as the couple ate in a restaurant.
The family were looking for somewhere ideal to scatter Dennis’ ashes in the sea nearby but returned to Sweden after the theft.
Two days later the ashes were located in a parking lot in the village of Moni, just off the Limassol highway following a tearful phone call from the alleged thief to the mother, Kinga.
They boarded a boat in early January and scattered the ashes at sea in Limassol, as was Dennis’ wish.
The mother had asked authorities to go easy on the preparators. Kinga in a post on her Facebook account said the thief called her in tears and apologised for the incident.
“I ask the authorities for mercy on those people! They are not bad!! They just did something stupid. But finally, they returned our son! I hope they will get a chance to have a happy life! We pray for them and we are really grateful”.
Dennis was killed in a car accident in Sweden last summer and his parents thought Cyprus would be a fitting place to scatter his ashes.
