Six police officers knocked on lawyer Nicos Clerides’s door at 7:30 on the morning of Holy Saturday, April 11, seized his mobile phone, USB drive and computers, and left.
Three days later, the devices remain in police hands, a Supreme Court challenge is under way and complaints have been filed with European anti-corruption and legal protection bodies.
Nicos Clerides is the lawyer representing Sandy, the woman at the centre of sexual abuse and corruption allegations made public by Volt candidate and investigative journalist Makarios Drousiotis in a social media post last month. Clerides had been in possession of approximately 1,000 SMS messages Sandy handed him around 2019. He had previously agreed to hand the messages to police, who could in any case have obtained them via a court order. The Sandy case has triggered a wide-ranging investigation involving police, the courts and multiple political and legal figures.
The officers acted on a search warrant issued at 1:00 on the morning of the same day. Clerides described the conduct of the raid in stark terms. “They woke me up and their behaviour was worse than the British during EOKA. They pushed me at the door to get in,” he said.
His lawyer Christos Clerides, who is representing him, announced a series of legal steps in response and alleged that Holy Saturday was chosen deliberately to prevent any immediate recourse to justice.
Cyprus Police rejected the criticism in an official announcement, saying the case is being investigated with “absolute seriousness and full professionalism.” The force said all available evidence is being evaluated for an objective investigation and that there will be no public commentary to ensure the unimpeded course of the inquiry.
Nicos Clerides’s mobile phone is already being processed, with reports that it may be referred to Europol. His lawyers have applied to the court registry for a copy of the sworn affidavit on which the warrant was based. Legal circles cited by Philenews noted that the devices have now been in police hands for days and that if police fail to establish a material connection between the seized material and the Sandy case, the operation could be characterised as an unjustified interference with legal professional privilege. If the Supreme Court rules in Clerides’s favour and orders the immediate return of the devices, the police leadership would face serious exposure, these sources said.
In addition to the Supreme Court application to annul the search warrant, Clerides’s team has notified the Data Protection Commissioner, the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) and the Group of Experts on the Protection of the Legal Profession (GRAVO). A letter has also been sent to the Attorney General demanding the immediate return of the seized devices and warning that their continued retention exposes the Republic to liability for damages.
The legal proceedings described here are ongoing and no findings have been made by any court at the time of publication.
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