The Paphos criminal court will on Thursday decide whether the trial of suspended Paphos mayor Phedonas Phedonos, who stands accused of rape and domestic abuse, will be heard behind closed doors.

Phedonos pleaded not guilty to all charges last month, having been charged with five counts of rape, indecent assault, actual bodily harm, and administering a substance capable of intoxicating or neutralising another person’s resistance, among other offences.

Since then, prosecution lawyer Irini Savva has requested that the trial be held behind closed doors, saying that such a provision would be necessary to “protect the complainant”, and stating that the laws surrounding trials of this nature allow for them to be held behind closed doors for this reason.

Phedonos’ lawyer Christos Pourgourides had initially intended to file an objection, but now is not expected to.

The court stated that the deliberation of the question of whether the trial should be held behind closed doors should also be held behind closed doors, as “the discussion of the request may include references to elements of the case which require protection”.

Additionally, the court stated that following Thursday’s hearing, the next five hearings would be held on consecutive days between July 27 and July 31.

Allegations of domestic abuse against Phedonos surfaced after social media personality Ioanna Photiou, better known by her alias Annie Alexui, claimed to hold documents from the related to admissions of Phedonos’ wife Louiza Andreou to the Nicosia general hospital in 2017, which stated that she had been “beaten” by Phedonos.

Andreou has vehemently denied all accusations made against her husband, writing in a post on social media that “my family is being subjected to a coordinated attack”.

“Everyone who really knows me, in my workplace, in our extended family, our friends, know that I am not a victim and that I have no fear. I have lived harmoniously with my husband for 20 years. I assure you that he is a wonderful man, decent and honest, and I am truly proud of him and the battles he is fighting,” she wrote.

The allegations of rape surfaced in February, when Paphos-based land developer Theodoros Aristodemou, of Aristo Developers, accused him of committing the crime around ten years ago, before giving a statement to the police.

Aristodemou has had various run-ins with Phedonos and the Paphos municipality in recent years, having been referred for trial in 2014 alongside his wife and two associates over alleged fraudulent demarcation of 177 plots of land within municipal boundaries.

It had been alleged at the time that thousands of square metres of land which had originally been designated as green space were reassigned to a development company, but the four were cleared by the Paphos criminal court the following year.

An appeal was filed against the acquittal, but the verdict was upheld by the supreme court in 2019, which found that while the paperwork contained irregularities, there had been “no deliberate attempt to secure planning permission under false pretences” on the part of Aristodemou, his wife, or his associates.

Shortly after the accusations were made, Phedonos was suspended from his mayoral post by Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou. Since being suspended, he has been paid a third of his mayoral salary by the state.

His suspension will end either when legal proceedings regarding the allegations levelled against them have concluded. If he then returns to his duties, he will be entitled to the full amount of the salaries he had lost during his suspension.

Since February, Angelos Onisiforou has been working as acting Paphos mayor.