Investigative missteps aided Cyprus serial killer

It's more than the grizzly body count that's numbed people on the small east Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus.

The country may have experienced mass killings decades ago during inter-ethnic conflict, but the self-confessed crimes of an army captain are something new for the island of around 1 million people.

The captain, who has not been formally identified, has confessed to killing seven foreign women and girls and disposed of the bodies at an abandoned mineshaft, a poisonous lake, and a pit in the middle of a military firing range.

Members of the Cyprus Special Disaster Response Unit are seen in boat as they search for suitcases in a man-made lake, near the village of Mitsero outside of the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Tuesday, April 30, 2019. Cyprus police spokesman Andreas Angelides says British experts called in to assist in the east Mediterranean island nation's serial killer case have been brought up to speed on the ongoing probe. (AP PhotoPetros Karadjias)

He is widely acknowledged to be Cyprus' first serial killer.

His crimes have raised disturbing questions over police ineptitude and even of racism. Cyprus wants answers to how the killer was able to go unnoticed for around two-and-a-half-years following the initial missing people's reports.

Yiota Papadopoulou, the wife of prominent politician Nicholas Papadopoulos, has spoken of her inquiry October 2016 about the whereabouts of Livia Florentina Bunea who had vanished with her eight year-old daughter Elena Natalia.

Members of the Cyprus Special Disaster Response Unit search for suitcases in a man-made lake, near the village of Mitsero outside of the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Wednesday, May 1, 2019. Cyprus police spokesman Andreas Angelides says British experts called in to assist in the east Mediterranean island nation's serial killer case have been brought up to speed on the ongoing probe. (AP PhotoPetros Karadjias)

A police officer said authorities had good reason to believe the 36-year-old Romanian had absconded with her child to the ethnically divided island nation's breakaway Turkish Cypriot north.

"I believe that maybe, some other women could have been saved," she told public broadcaster RIK.

It was only the chance discovery of the bound body of 38-year-old Filipino Mary Rose Tiburcio down an abandoned mineshaft on April 14 that sparked a full investigation. That probe quickly led authorities to the suspect through Tiburcio's online message exchange with the killer.

Members of the Cyprus Special Disaster Response Unit search for suitcases in a man-made lake, near the village of Mitsero outside of the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Wednesday, May 1, 2019. Cyprus police spokesman Andreas Angelides says British experts called in to assist in the east Mediterranean island nation's serial killer case have been brought up to speed on the ongoing probe. (AP PhotoPetros Karadjias)

Louis Koutroukides who heads the Cyprus Domestic Workers' Association, has said that when reporting Tiburcio's disappearance last year he was told by a policeman that he was "too old to concern himself with Filipino women."

Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades has pledged that the government will get to the bottom of the "abhorrent murders" and fully investigate the "actions or failures" regarding missing persons reports.

On Friday, Anastasiades sacked Police Chief Zacharias Chrysostomou over what he said was "possible negligence" in failing to carry out a swift and thorough missing persons investigation, something that could have saved lives.

A diver is lowered into a man-made lake to search for suitcases containing the bodies of three victims, near the village of Mitsero outside of the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Thursday, May 2, 2019. The justice minister in Cyprus resigned amid mounting criticism that police bungled their investigations when some of the seven foreign women and girls slain by a serial killer were initially reported missing. (AP PhotoPetros Karadjias)

And Justice Minister Ionas Nicolaou who resigned Thursday also spoke of "possible mistakes" by law enforcement. But he also alluded to darker "attitudes and perceptions" pervading society "that honor no one."

Four of the victims — including Tiburcio's six year-old daughter — were Filipino. Cyprus has a 14,000-strong Filipino community that according to rights advocate Lissa Jataas faces discrimination and even exploitation.

Filipinos have become a feature of Cypriot society with many employed as housekeepers, working long days for a mere 400 euros ($450) per month. Passports and work permits often stay in the hands of employers.

"We're very vulnerable to abuse and harassment at work because our workplace is our home as well," Jataas said.

Ester Beatty, chair of the Federation of Filipino Organizations in Cyprus, said she hopes the killings "serve as a wake-up call to those nasty employers" that they should live up to European standards.

Though the Cypriot government said the law is fully EU-compliant directives, affording foreign workers full protections, Jataas said many workers keep silent for fear of being deported.

Corina Drousiotou, who heads the nonprofit group Cyprus Refugee Council said the whole case has underscored the "institutionalized racism" running through the country's justice system, and that the odds are stacked even more against a complainant if they happen to be a woman.

Even the police's most ardent supporters concede that the investigation of the initial missing persons' reports were insufficient. Police Support Association head Neophytos Papamiltiadous acknowledged a lack of proper oversight by those officers' immediate superiors.

However, Papamiltiadous rejected the notion that racism was a major factor, noting that foreign workers do cross into the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north without notifying authorities.

Divided in 1974 when Turkey invaded following a coup by supporters of union with Greece, Cyprus' northern third is an unrecognized entity and Cypriot police have no jurisdiction there. The legal vacuum affords those who want to disappear a way out.

But Papamiltiadous said that's certainly no excuse for lackadaisical police work.

With no real voice, it is easy for some police officers to ignore foreign worker complaints or missing persons reports if they're under no pressure to do so, said Stefanos Spaneas, a professor of social work at the University of Nicosia.

Spaneas said in his experience with working with migrants and refugees it's less a matter of racism among police ranks than one of "stupidity" within a disorganized force whose members would work less given that low wages offer no financial incentive.

"If someone would avoid work, they would," he said.

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Former Cypriot President George Vassiliou, a successful businessman who helped to energize his divided island's economy and set it on the road to European Union membership, has died. He was 94.

Vassiliou died Wednesday after being hospitalized on Jan. 6 for a respiratory infection. Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides praised Vassiliou as a leader who became synonymous with the country's economic prosperity, social progress and push toward modernization.

“Cyprus has lost a universal citizen who broadened our homeland's international imprint,” Christodoulides said in a written statement.

His wife Androulla, a lawyer who twice served as a European commissioner, posted on X in the early hours Wednesday that her companion of 59 years “slipped away quietly in our arms” in hospital.

“It's difficult to say farewell to a man who was a superb husband and father, a man full of kindness and love for the country and its people,” she wrote.

When he became president in 1988, Vassiliou lifted hopes that a peace deal with the island's breakaway Turkish Cypriots was possible after more than a decade of off-again, on-again talks. He swiftly relaunched stalled reunification negotiations with Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, but they ended at an impasse that continues today.

Cyprus was split into an internationally recognized Greek-speaking south and a Turkish-speaking north in 1974, when Turkey invaded the island after a coup aimed at uniting it with Greece. A Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence nine years later was recognized only by Turkey.

During an interview in 1989, one year into his five-year term as president, Vassiliou said: "The only dangerous thing for the Cyprus issue is to remain ... in a vacuum, forgotten and with no one taking any interest."

But Vassiliou succeeded on many other fronts, using his skills as a successful entrepreneur to modernize and expand his county’s economy, even though he had been raised by parents who were pro-communist.

Vassiliou was born in Cyprus in 1931 to two doctors who were activists and volunteered their services to the communist forces during the civil war that engulfed Greece in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

With the defeat of the communists in Greece in 1949, the Vassiliou family moved to Hungary and later Uzbekistan.

George Vassiliou initially studied medicine in Geneva and Vienna, but he later switched to economics, earning a doctorate from the University of Economics in Budapest.

After a brief stint doing marketing in London, Vassiliou returned to Cyprus in 1962, and he began a successful business career that made him a millionaire. He founded the Middle East Market Research Bureau, a consultancy business that grew to have offices in 30 countries in the Middle East, South Africa, eastern and central Europe.

In 1987, Vassilou was elected president of Cyprus as an independent entrepreneur who also was supported by the island's powerful communist party AKEL, which his father had one been a prominent member of.

Vassiliou bucked the staid political culture of the time by making the presidency more accessible to the public and visiting government offices and schools. That prompted some criticism that he was turning the presidency into a marketing pulpit.

"I consider it the president’s obligation to come in contact with the civil service," Vassiliou told Greek state TV. "I call this communication with youth. Some call it marketing. ... I call it the proper execution of the president's mission."

He also pushed through key reforms, including imposing a sales tax while slashing income taxes, streamlining a cumbersome civil service, establishing the first Cyprus university, and abolishing a state monopoly in electronic media. To make sure the world better understood the Cyprus peace process, he widely expanded a network of press offices at Cypriot diplomatic missions.

Through his tenure, the island's per capita gross domestic product almost doubled, culminating in possibly his most notable achievement as president — applying for full membership to the European Union, a goal achieved 13 years later.

Vassiliou lost the presidency in 1993 to Glafcos Clerides, who appointed his rival as Cyprus' chief negotiator with the EU in 1998. A decade later, Vassiliou headed a Greek Cypriot team negotiating EU matters during reunification talks. He remained politically active, founding a party of his own and being elected to the Cypriot legislature in 1996.

He authored several books on EU issues and Cypriot politics; was a member of several international bodies, including the Shimon Peres Institute of Peace; and received honors and decorations from countries such as France, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Egypt.

Apart from his wife, Vassiliou is also survived by two daughters and a son.

FILE -Democratic Presidential Candidate Bill Clinton, left, meets with President George Vassiliou of Cyprus at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, Aug. 9, 1992. (AP Photo/Mario Cabrera, File)

FILE -Cyprus President George Vassiliou, left, smiles as his son Evelthon, 17, is introduced to the daughter of Massachusetts Governor and Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis, Kara, 19, at the Statehouse in Boston on Aug. 3, 1988 as Dukakis, second from right looks on, during a visit by the Cyprus President to Boston. (AP Photo/Carol Francavilla, File)