Another Briton jailed for sex crimes dies in Cyprus

A convicted sex offender who was serving a prison sentence in Cyprus died on Friday, marking the second death of a British national within the island’s penitentiary system this year in connection with sex crimes.

Local media said an elderly prisoner, described as an 80-year-old British national, passed away on Friday morning at Nicosia General Hospital General, where he had been taken for medical treatment.

It was not immediately clear when he had been transported to the hospital. Neither cause nor manner of death were made known but a post mortem has been scheduled, prison officials said.

Local media reports said the prisoner, who was convicted in the United Kingdom as a sex offender and brought to the Republic of Cyprus in 2021 to serve out his term, was facing a number of medical issues.

Last week another British inmate, a 60-year-old male who had a pending trial for raping a minor, was found hanged in a shower of Nicosia Central Prisons.

The manner of death in last week’s incident was still not known but state forensic examiners confirmed findings that he had died from hanging.

A day after the hanging, local media said a different inmate described as a foreign national had tried to hang himself in the toilet but prison guards intervened and halted the attempted suicide.

The incident came just three months after the death of another inmate, a 36-year-old pretrial detainee, was also found dead in prison back in November, with officials reportedly ruling out foul play.

Back in October the prison made news after a Turkish Cypriot inmate was cruelly tortured to death for two days, while last month police carried out an investigation into attempted murder after an inmate described as a foreign national grabbed a Greek Cypriot fellow inmate by the throat, causing him to faint.

Nicosia Central Prisons has also made headline news recently following a power play that leaked to the media, with the warden accusing a high ranking police official of trying to undermine her leadership.

In December 2021 wrongfully convicted Raphael Rowe, the presenter in NETFLIX series “Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons,” was locked up for a week in Nicosia where he sought to understand how the prison was shedding its previous notorious image of unexplained deaths and suicides.