Direct Democracy MP Diana Constantinides has pledged to clamp down on violence against women during her five-year term, having borne the burden of losing her mother at a young age.

Her mother, she revealed on Sigma TV this week, was Christine Constantinides from Sweden, who in 1993 was raped, murdered and dumped in Kotsiatis landfill. Christine, who was 28, had been missing since June 7, 1993, but her body was only found in November 1993.

Antonis Prokopiou Kitas, also known as ‘Al Capone’, told the police on October 31, 1993, that the body of 21-year-old Oxana Lisna from Romania, missing since June 20 the same year, was in a well in Livadia, Larnaca. Kitas then admitted he had also killed Christine. It took 17 days for the authorities to find her amongst the rubbish.

The autopsies indicated that both women had been raped and beaten, and had died a violent death.

Diana Constantinides had taken part in the House human rights committee on Monday, which discussed violence against women and recent femicides. She told Sigma that a murder causes “collateral damage” and told her own story.

“I am also living the part of collateral damage, even if it wasn’t a matter of domestic violence. Having your mother taken from you, the person we all need so much, is not just a legal issue. It is a deeply personal matter. No woman should be a victim of attempted murder or femicide,” she said.

Constantinides added that “the children who are left behind bear the burden.”

Kitas did not kill Christine alone. He had an accomplice, Michalis Iacovides. Initially, when Kitas – 25 at the time – was arrested, he blamed Andros Kalopsidiotis for both crimes. Kalopsidiotis was then arrested and remanded for eight days, only to be released when nothing was found against him. In the meantime, the police arrested Iacovides, a taxi driver from Lakatamia, who admitted both murders and implicated Kitas.

Kitas was convicted to two life sentences in 1994. He has escaped twice, once in 1993 after he was arrested for robbing a jewellery shop in Athienou and the second in 2008 when he climbed out of a clinic window and disappeared for weeks, prompting the resignation of the justice minister and chief of police, as well as suspensions of police and prison officers. In 2009, he was convicted for masterminding the exhumation of former president Tassos Papadopoulos from the cemetery in Deftera. The remains were found almost a year later. In 2019 Kitas had requested to be released and be fitted with an ankle monitor. His request was rejected.

Diana Constantinides said two men killed her mother in 1993, but two others stood by her and supported her: her father and later her husband.

“They became my knees that buckled. They became the voice I lost.”

Addressing women who may be experiencing abuse or intimidation, Constantinides urged them to find the strength to ask for help.

“Whether it is 1993 or 2026, the consequences are the same. Human pain remains the same.”