It is one of the photos-symbols of the Turkish invasion of '74, but also of the martyrdom of the prisoners and the missing. A Turkish soldier offers a cigarette to a Greek prisoner. For many years, the captured prisoner was considered missing and his family believed that one day he would be found alive.
Until 2009, when the remains of not only the person pictured but also of his four soldiers who were captured in Jiaos were found in a well. Another 14 bodies of missing persons were found in the same well.
The five of Jiaos
The famous photo shows five captured soldiers: Antonakis Korellis, Panikos Nikolaou, Christoforos Skordis, Ioannis Papagiannis and Filippos Papakyriakou. The five national guardsmen were in an outpost a few meters above their point of capture. Together with 7 other men, they watched the Turkish tanks that were passing towards the boulevard leading to Famagusta, holding No. 4 rifles and a Kalashnikov. One of them fired his machine gun at the tank.
Then the "procession of chariots" stopped and turned to the outpost of the National Guard, where it began to fire against them. A few hours later, Sergeant Pavlos Vouniotis saw a green chariot approaching. On it were Turkish soldiers, Turkish journalist Ergin Konuksever, a woman and a child. The Merit chariot team arrested the five soldiers who, according to the journalist, surrendered as soon as they saw the Turkish chariot.
"I photographed them dead"
In a statement he gave to the United Nations in 1990, the journalist stated that a Turkish chariot officer had captured the five men and offered them water and cigarettes. He then handed them over to Turkish Cypriot mujahideen who executed them.
Ergin said that in addition to the photos he took of the prisoners kneeling and smoking alive, he later painted their dead bodies after being executed by the Turkish Cypriots.
When the bodies of the missing were found in a well in 2009, Ergin's testimony changed, saying that Greek Cypriots had the films from the burial site of the five men.
"I lit a cigarette for him"
On the day that 23-year-old Giannis Papagiannis was buried, the man in the photo-symbol, who is smoking, the Turkish soldier who lit it gave him an interview in the newspaper "Vatan". Ersel Kayyan, then a lieutenant in the Turkish army, said the five men surrendered as soon as they saw them.
"It simply came to our notice then. I told them we would not touch them. I offered them cigarettes. One of the soldiers showed me his wedding ring. He probably wanted to tell me he was married. We could not take them with us in the tanks and handed over the captives to the Turkish Cypriot fighters. "The fighters must have killed the prisoners," he told the newspaper.
14 dead in a well
The bodies of the five missing were finally discovered by a joint team of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot archaeologists from the Missing Persons Committee in a well, along with 14 other bodies.
Journalist Sevkul Uludakl heard a Turkish Cypriot explain why the bodies of the five men were found there, as the place where they were executed was different:
Source: Mixanitouxronou.com.cy