AKEL has launched a fierce attack against the Attorney General’s Office and the Christodoulides government in a statement issued in response to the prosecution of journalist Makarios Drousiotis, citing “excessive zeal” and “selective sensitivity.”
AKEL maintains that the stance of the relevant institutions raises serious questions, while denouncing an attempt to discredit and retaliate against the journalist, placing freedom of expression and journalism at the center of the issue.
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It notes, among other things, that “the very same Office of the Attorney General that is under scrutiny for its inaction and unwillingness to act on blatant scandals and serious criminal cases—golden passports, the black van, the Cooperative Bank scandal, a rape case that led to Cyprus’s conviction by the ECHR, the ‘State-Mafia’ and so on—is now moving with lightning speed and invoking anachronistic laws with the intent to destroy a journalist and his investigation.”
“Meanwhile, the government of Nikos Christodoulides has decided that the financial contributions made by citizens in recent days toward the costs of M. Drousiotis’s legal battle must be investigated. The hypocrisy is overwhelming, if we recall that, as we saw in the “video of shame,” Mr. Lakotrypis was collecting cash for N. Christodoulides’s election campaign in order to circumvent the law,” he adds.
He also emphasized that “citizens realize that the concern of the Prosecutor’s Office and the government is not the completeness and validity of the investigation conducted by this particular journalist in the Santi case. Their obvious goal and motive is to discredit him and seek revenge because he revealed aspects of the life and political career of Nicos Anastasiades, of whom he was a close associate and advisor.”
At the same time, he emphasizes that AKEL condemns the stance of the Prosecutor’s Office and the government.
At the same time, it states that the party’s criterion “is not the political positions or claims of M. Drousiotis or any other journalist, but the defense of freedom of expression and journalism in our country, in the face of the arbitrariness and arrogance of those in power. Any citizen who feels aggrieved or wronged by the claims of any journalist has the inalienable right to take legal action. However, the state and its institutions are not the tools or instruments of anyone to be used against anyone they wish to silence.”
