Our View: ‘Sandy’ probe must be carried out without social media distractions

Almost three weeks have passed since journalist Makarios Drousiotis posted the allegations made by the woman dubbed ‘Sandy’. Much has happened since then, including the categorical public denials by the people at the centre of the allegations, confiscation by police of the mobile phones and laptops of the lawyer who had represented Sandy, the appearance of another journalist that helped Sandy go to a shelter for women in Germany and – inevitably – claims that police were plotting a cover-up.

Public opinion seems divided between those who believe all the allegations because they view corruption as endemic and those who are disinclined to accept every accusation made against the authorities, especially when the evidence is based on hearsay. The reality is that there is no concrete evidence to support the allegations, which are all based on text messages and screenshots of text messages, all contained on the mobile phones of Sandy, who cannot be described as a reliable witness.

In statements made to the police, Sandy reportedly denied there was any truth in the allegations she conveyed to Drousiotis and her lawyer Nikos Clerides, saying that she had fabricated the text messages on which the allegations were based. With the primary witness telling police she had made everything up, it should have been the end of the story, but the authorities could not pull the plug on the case, because there would have been a big public outcry and accusations of an attempted cover-up by the system.    

Then again, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Sandy had been forced to deny all her allegations by threats and intimidation and to claim that everything she presented to Drousiotis and Clerides as evidence of criminal activity was made up. The existence of this explanation is the reason why the police have sent the devices with the text messages and screenshots for forensic examinations to establish whether they were authentic. If they are, the investigations will continue, but if they are fabricated that will be the end of the matter. A case of much ado about nothing.

Police chief Themistos Arnaoutis hit all the right notes in a short statement he made on Thursday, saying the investigation was being carried out “to arrive at the truth, based on the evidence”. He added that “we are taking statements from all the people involved and those mentioned, evidence and information is being evaluated and all the real events and information emerging are being methodically recorded.” Nobody is “above the law and the procedures”, he assured.

Drousiotis, who has taken on the political system on his own, has overstepped the mark in criticising the police investigation. He said on ‘X’ that “for the past 10 days the police have been working feverishly to prove that what I pointed out in my initial post is a product of my imagination.” The journalist has also been appearing on radio and television promoting his version of events, actions which in any country with rule of law would have been regarded as an attempt to obstruct the course of justice. The police investigation must be carried out without attempts to dictate its direction and outcome through social media posts.

This disregard for due process appears to be standard in practice in Cyprus. The suspended mayor of Paphos Phedonas Phedonos was systematically presented as a wife-beater, a rapist and a corrupt official by a daily newspaper, before police investigations had even begun. The paper was not just trying to dictate the direction of a police investigation, but it had also declared Phedonas guilty before he had even set foot in a court.

In the end, if the police cannot be trusted to do their job who should we rely on to enforce the law and investigate crime? Journalists, newspapers and social media have every right to criticise police actions and decisions, but they cannot tell them how to do their job and how to conduct an investigation. Even if an independent investigator is eventually appointed, the police would still have a part to play.