The evidence presented by prosecutors in court again became a bone of contention on Tuesday in the trial concerning the alleged theft of thousands of documents from the central prisons.

Testifying were two witnesses for the prosecution – CID sergeant Argyris Petrakos, the officer assigned with the safekeeping of the evidence, and a police constable.

During the previous hearing, the court established a discrepancy between the actual items of evidence presented by prosecutors and a numbered list of the same items.

On Tuesday, the court reaffirmed the discrepancy after having carried out a second count.

Petrakos was cross-examined by Chris Triantafyllides, the attorney for defendant number one – former prisons director Anna Aristotelous.

Triantafyllides put it to the witness that he was not present during the official receipt of the evidentiary items. He also asserted that Petrakos did not know whether the evidence was tampered with or if it was sealed with a police tape.

The evidence in question are boxes containing DVD drives, USB drives, floppy disks and one hard disk. The devices contain the data, in digitised form, of the approximately 48,000 documents believed to have been stolen from the central prisons in 2022.

Responding, Petrakos stated that the evidence was sealed with tape at the time he took receipt of them.

Next, the lawyer submitted to the witness that he cannot prove the items presented in court had been found in the possession of Panayiotis Tsolias – a chief prison warden and defendant number three.

The witness agreed he could not prove this.

Petrakos was then questioned by defendant number two – Athena Demetriou, the former deputy director of the prisons. Demetriou is representing herself in court.

She put it to the witness that he did not follow proper police procedure relating to the safekeeping of evidence.

Petrakos disagreed, insisting that the items were not tampered with, and that no else but him had access to them.

At this point, the lawyer for the third defendant motioned for the original 48,000 documents to be submitted in court. The judge rejected the motion.

Next to take the stand was a police constable who works at the photography and imagery unit of the police’s criminal investigations lab.

The witness presented his report, which consisted of 113 photographs along with the relevant photo booklet.

During cross-examination, the witness stated he photographed the items as instructed. He did not know who arranged the layout of the items to be photographed, nor where the items were being held for safekeeping.

Addressing the witness, Triantafyllides said: “All the items you photographed were deemed illegal. Whatever the quality of your work, whatever you took pictures of, it was in vain.

“The police were illegally holding the items that you photographed.”

Weighing in, defendant Demetriou told the court: “Nothing must be moved from a scene before it is photographed. The photos depict objects inside the CID offices and in the courtyard of the police HQ.”

The trial continues on Thursday.

On trial are Aristotelous, Demetriou, five prison wardens and a former employee of the prisons who is now a police officer.

They have all pleaded not guilty.

The indictment includes conspiracy to commit a felony, abuse of power, violation of official confidentiality, personal data processing offenses, theft by a civil servant, violation of the security rules for classified documents and illegal possession of property.

The documents cache was found in April 2025 in the residence of Tsolias, a chief prison warden.

Police had been searching the premises as part of an investigation into a different case.

Many of the documents are marked ‘confidential’ and ‘secret’ and are believed to have been removed illegally from the central prisons between November and December 2022.