A senior Sovereign Base Areas (SBA) judge reserved his decision on Tuesday on a bail application from the 30-year-old father of two Bulgarian boys who were found dead in a car in Xylofagou last June, after hearing submissions from his lawyer and the prosecution.
The father faces two charges of causing death through a reckless and rash act. He has been held in custody since the SBA Court in Dhekelia ordered he remain in detention until trial, a ruling his lawyer, Christos Theodoulou, is now appealing, asking that his client be granted conditional release.
The two boys, aged 8 and 10, had arrived in Cyprus in mid-May, with relatives, for a holiday with their father, who works on the island. The Cyprus state later funded the repatriation of their bodies to Bulgaria.
The father had separately applied for bail and for permission to travel to Bulgaria for his sons’ funeral. Both requests were rejected by the senior SBA judge, who cited the absence of a legal framework that would allow the Republic of Cyprus to assist.
Tuesday’s hearing had originally been set for the father to enter a plea. Because of the pending appeal, the session was taken up instead with submissions from the defence and the prosecution, and the judge reserved his decision.
In a written statement, Theodoulou said the hearing had centred on whether an effective mechanism exists to locate and return a person within the Bases Areas. He said testimony from a Bases police officer, called as a prosecution witness, had pointed to existing cooperation channels between the SBA authorities and the Republic of Cyprus on locating, transferring and arresting people. Both Cypriot and SBA law, he added, already provide a route for requesting the arrest and transfer of someone who has fled, and he questioned whether citing an inability to enforce detention was consistent with cooperation mechanisms that appear to work in practice.
Theodoulou described the issue as one of wider significance for anyone held in detention within the Bases Areas. “The conditions for bail have been met,” he said, adding that the defence had proposed conditions to ensure the father would appear at trial and that none of the legal exceptions to bail applied.
The two brothers were left unsupervised on the morning of June 28 after their father left for work in Limassol and their father’s 38-year-old partner also went out. She had been arrested but was later released. She found the boys dead in the car that afternoon.
SBA investigators, examining CCTV footage, found that the boys appeared to have got into the car, which was parked in the open parking area of the apartment block where the family lived, through a rear door.
Philenews has reported that expert examinations found damage to that door, which had remained unlocked even though the rest of the car was locked. The children then appear to have locked themselves in and become trapped, as the vehicle’s child safety lock was also activated.
