The proceedings of the prison documents trial surrounding former central prisons director Anna Aristotelous will continue on February 9 following a request made by the defence during a hearing on Friday.

The eight defendants, including Aristotelous, former deputy director Athena Demetriou, five prison employees and a policeman, said they had been unable to prepare for the hearing as authorities had not provided them with documents previously asked for.

According to local media, only three of the lawyers had been provided the witness material ahead of the trial, and were handed the documents on a USB, rather than in printed form as provided by the law.

Artistotelous’ lawyer, Christos Triantafyllides, added that the documents, described by him as “allegedly confidential”, included interviews, newspaper reports, decisions by criminal courts, information leaflets for migrants, a plane ticket and basketball regulations.

“It is understandable that for an accused person to be able to answer, they must know why they are being accused. It is not difficult to realise this,” he said.

He stressed that he could not counsel his client until these had been made available, meaning she was unable to respond to the charges brought up in Friday’s hearing.

Lawyer Sotiris Argyrou, representing Demetriou, said he would proceed with a preliminary objection, as the case could not be tried, with his defendant also denying to respond to the allegations brought against her.

He stressed that the current trial was directly related to complaints made by the central prison administration in 2022, relating to the events between his client, the prison directorate and a police officer in relation to gathering material aimed at harming her.

Argyrou said the issue concerned a “retaliation due to a specific complaint” and “should not even be before the criminal court.”

“Our position will be, if connected, that the prison administration did what it did under a specific directive, the state will have an obligation to protect them and not to prosecute them,” he said, referring to the EU directive for the protection of whistleblowers and the constitution of the Republic.

Prosecutor Anna Matthaiou said a USB referring to several documents had been attached to the indictment, stressing that if these were considered insufficient, the defence could file a relevant request in writing.

Responding, Triantafyllides said that the USB only included a list of the documents and their description, criticising that meanwhile, the documents in question had been provided to witnesses on the indictment for identification purposes.

Matthaiou asked to be given one month to respond to the defence’s request.

The defence lawyers rejected the proposal, saying this was not a reasonable timeframe, with some of them calling for the suspension of charges.

The investigation into Aristotelous was launched in April 2025, when police searched the home of a prison warden as part of a separate probe into an alleged scam.

During the search, investigators seized some 300,000 pages of documents marked “confidential” and “secret,” believed to have been removed illegally between November and December 2022.

Aristotelous was serving as governor of the central prisons at the time of the alleged unlawful removal of the documents, before leaving the post in late December 2022.

In June 2025, the cabinet suspended her from her post as acting permanent secretary at the defence ministry.

During court proceedings, Triantafyllides repeatedly said that his client was being used as a “scapegoat” and would appeal the decision.