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Thursday, November 29, 2012

Court fines Cyprus over 'missing' dead soldier





Army authorities buried then 28-year-old reservist Palmas along with some 30 other Greek Cypriot soldiers in a mass grave marked "unknown" at Lakatamia cemetery on Nicosia's outskirts shortly after the fighting stopped.

"Sufficient evidence has been presented which demonstrates that the republic evaded its obligation to inform relatives in a proper and timely fashion and so violated their right to the truth, condemning the plaintiffs to such hardship that it bordered on inhumane treatment," the court said in its ruling.

Andriani's oldest daughter Kalliopi, who was only 5 in 1974 said a photograph of her mother, sister and their children standing next to her father's remains is the only family portrait that they have.

[...] that was eclipsed by the bitter awareness of having grown up in the offices of the very same officials who kept the truth from her, even as her family took part in countless missing persons demonstrations clutching a photograph of her dad.

An exhumation and identification program by the U.N.-led Committee on Missing Persons has returned the identified remains of 264 Greek Cypriots and 66 Turkish Cypriots to their families since it began in 2006.


READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.sfgate.com