Witness slip-up stuns court in Alexoui case

Prosecutors in the Alexoui case were forced to correct the record on Monday, in reference to a previous hearing when it emerged that their sole prosecution witness and victim had access to undisclosed information from a recent witness statement.

Last Friday an entire courtroom in Nicosia was stunned after Panicos “Glykas” Panayiotou, who had an attempt on his life back in 2017, had casually volunteered information while on the stand that was extracted right out of a statement from another witness in the case.

The two defendants, Nicosia businessman Alexis “Alexoui” Mavromichalis and Miroslav “Rudolf” Balazovjech, both of whom are being held without bail since February 2020, are facing attempted murder charges in the case.

According to local media, while Glykas was testifying on Friday, the state prosecutor posed a question, with the witness responding with information that revealed he had knowledge of information from another statement that had not been disclosed to the defence team.

The defence attorneys protested over the incident with the prosecutor initially telling the judges he had no knowledge of the statement.

But on Monday, a representative from the state attorney’s office told the court that CID Nicosia had indeed submitted the statement in question to the prosecution. The prosecutor said he had not recognized the name of the person who gave the statement to police recently because he had known him by a different name.

Besides evidence-withholding allegations, the defence lawyers have argued all along that the case built on Glykas’ testimony was riddled with inconsistencies, witness retractions, and non-corroborative statements from potential witnesses, while also suggesting that police were not playing fair.

Alexoui’s attorney also went as far as to raise questions over police conduct throughout the process as well as point to a feud between cops and his client.

Glykas’ use of a face mask in court, citing measures against the spread of the coronavirus, have also raised eyebrows, with the defence attorneys arguing their clients’ right to a fair and public trial was being violated.

The attorneys argued that Glykas, who had initially named a different person as the perpetrator following the incident, was hiding behind the face mask, making it difficult for the court to observe him and evaluate the veracity of his statements in court.