The Counter-Terror

In their terrorist war against the British, the Cyprus EOKA (Union-with-Greece underground) has shot innocent people in the back, killed unarmed captives and committed other crimes. On their side, the Cypriot police and Britain's Special Branch have gradually stepped up their campaign against EOKA until, even many Britons are beginning to feel, it is close to being a counterterror. Last October the Cyprus Bar Council, a respected association of Cypriot attorneys trained in the British Inns of Court, set up a Human Rights Commission to investigate complaints of ill treatment under interrogation and damage to property during police searches.

Very soon the commission had dozens of cases on its hands. Into the office of Commission Chairman John Clerides, Q.C., staggered Joannis Christoforou, a Nicosia barber, freed after 16 days' interrogation by officers of the Special Branch; he was black and bruised from having been stripped, beaten on the head with iron bars, caned on the soles of his feet, pulled by the hair and punched repeatedly. Lawyer Clerides took his testimony, had Christoforou photographed, Xrayed.

Tea & Sympathy. In another case, that of 26-year-old Andreas Panayiotou, who died in his cell, the commission ordered a postmortem, found that he had been beaten to death. Explanation by the British police: Panayiotou had attempted to escape custody. Yet another case was that of Maria Anastasiou Lambrou who, after her Greek-speaking interrogator had punched her on the nose, warned him that she was pregnant. Thereupon the interrogator had told her that unless she told him the whereabouts of EOKA's top man, Colonel Grivas, she would suffer a miscarriage, which after two subsequent attacks, she did. Constable 1413 brought her a cup of tea, and she was taken to the hospital.

Within a month Chairman Clerides had collected 40 signed complaints of torture during interrogations; he submitted them to the British Governor of Cyprus, Field Marshal Sir John Harding. The British administration brushed off the charges as typical EOKA atrocity propaganda. To show its low regard for the Human Rights Commission, it arrested one of Cyprus' leading lawyers and brought charges against others. But news of the commission's work spread to such influential British newspapers as the Daily Telegraph and the Manchester Guardian. In a House of Commons press conference a fortnight ago, two honorably discharged British soldiers, formerly wardens in a Nicosia detention camp, told of brutal beatings of prisoners. Said ex-Serviceman David Toon: "We felt it our duty to speak. We feel that people in this country, and government officials here, have no knowledge of the harsh treatment meted out."

Distractions. Last week Sir John Harding felt obliged to answer the commission's charges publicly. It was a campaign of lies and distortion designed to distract public attention from serious EOKA reverses, said Harding, adding that a general inquiry now, with all the publicity it would invoke, would be merely "playing into our detractors' hands." In Britain's House of Lords, Lord Home for the government rejected demands for an impartial inquiry "for this very good reason --that the government has complete confidence that Sir John Harding will administer justice without fear or favor as he has done during a long career of public service."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.