Former central prison director Anna Aristotelous and seven other defendants all pleaded not guilty at the Nicosia criminal court on Tuesday to the charges they face regarding the alleged leaking of classified documents.
The charges all eight defendants face include those of conspiracy to commit a felony, the theft of state property involving no fewer than 48,432 documents, the theft of 370 architectural plans of the prison building, and the theft of 431 other items, including digital discs and electronic devices.
Additionally, some of the defendants face charges of abuse of power.
In court on Tuesday, defence lawyers argued that they had not been given copies of the architectural plans, and that the plans themselves were not classified documents.
In response, prosecution lawyer Anna Mattheou said that an email had been sent to all defence lawyers last Friday informing them that copies of all the relevant documents had been prepared and offering them the details of the police officers from whom they could receive the documents they need.
She argued that the only item of evidence which is pending is footage taken from CCTV cameras in the prison compound, which had been prepared on Monday.
On the matter of the documents, she said that copies of classified documents will not be delivered to the defence lawyers, who will instead be able to inspect them at the police’s civil investigation department’s headquarters.
In response, Aristotelous’ lawyer, Christos Triantafyllides, then requested that a specific date be set for the plans to be inspected by the defence.
The next court hearing will take place on March 26.
The documents were found during the search of the home of a prison warden on April 10 last year, with his home having been searched as part of an investigation into an alleged scam involving a convict buying items from the prison canteen and selling them to other inmates at an inflated price.
The inmate had allegedly taken a cut of the profit to look the other way.
At the time, newspaper Politis had said the documents had been taken out of the prison via a staircase near the prison’s administrative offices, and that they had been hidden in cloth bags. It was also reported that on some occasions, prisons department vehicles were used to transport the documents out of the prison.
Aristotelous was suspended from her role at the defence ministry in June last year, with Triantafyllides saying at the time that she had bene made a “scapegoat”.
He spoke of a “cannibalistic operation”, which he said “eroded the presumption of innocence” and accused the government of “character assassination”.
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